About the Book

Billions are spent each year on foreign aid. Tens of thousands are employed in the aid industry. The purpose is ostensibly selfless and benign. Yet it is the focus of controversy. David Sogge asks:
· Is there a real net flow of financial resources to the South?
· How much aid should there be?
· On what terms should it be given? Do the strings imposed imply a resurrection of old colonial controls?
· Can Northern governments, international financial institutions and developing countries ever agree?
· Can we think of an aid system for the new century -- democratic, effective, adequate and just?

About the Author

David Sogge

Contents

Contents
Forward & Acknowledgements
Prologue: Tale of Two Foreign Aid Initiatives
1. Foreign Aid: A Problem Posing as a Solution?
2. Who Aids Whom?
3. The Aid Regime
4. Aid Chains
5. Toward the Receiving End
6. Democratic Deficits
7. Money Talks
8. Outcomes
9. End of the Beginning, or Beginning of the End?
Appendices:
A. Major Donors‘ Top Five Recipients
B. Five Decades of Foreign Aid: Political & Economic Highlights
C. Intensity of ODA over Three Decades
D. The Debt
E. Sources of Information and Debate

Commendations

"Give and Take should be the primer on the aid industry. David Sogge makes clear why aid, in its present incarnation, will never help the poor." - Joe Hanlon, writer

"Little has been written on aid other than the usual uncritical reports of donor agencies. In this important book David Sogge suggests the principles that should govern a very different pattern of globalization, one based on democracy and equal relations between Third World and donor countries - a far cry indeed from the present situation." - Samir Amin


"David Sogge takes us up and down the "aid chain" and through the chequered history of foreign assistance. Impressively researched and reasoned, "Give and Take" leaves no doubt that calls for greater aid are pure folly until today‘s "market fundamentalism" and other donor agendas are rejected and systems of accountability to the poor we claim to assist are established." - Doug Hellinger, Executive Director, The Development Group for Alternative Policies


"Highly critical of the way foreign aid has worked in practice, this ambitious book also outlines some core principles which could lead to aid making a positive difference for poor people." - Roger Riddell, Christian Aid