Reshaping Power Relations within the International Aid Regime: The Role of the People’s Republic of China and Africa

ABSTRACT

International aid is one of the main issues within the Liberal International Order (LIO) in Africa, where traditional donors have held significant influence since the Second World War (WWII). The power dynamics within the aid regime, which have been characterised by asymmetry in both guiding standards and administering organisations, have started to undergo disruption in recent decades. The relationship between the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) has the potential to reshape the institutional arrangements of the international aid regime in the current global system. Beijing's increased financial presence in SSA, particularly its involvement in debt and financial dependency, challenges the hegemony of traditional donors who have historically employed Africa's debt and aid dependency as tools of asymmetric power. Both African governments and the PRC advocate for deep reforms of the current regime by defending favoured institutional arrangements, rejecting those deemed unfavourable and establishing new ones to substantially shift power dynamics within the international aid regime.

KEYWORDS:

• Africa
• traditional donors
• PRC
• international aid
• power relations
• aid regime

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank his supervisor Zhang Falin and the anonymous reviewers at The International Spectator for their insights and helpful comments on earlier drafts of this manuscript.

Notes

1 To facilitate a meaningful comparison, this article considers international aid to encompass both Official Development Assistance (ODA) and Other Official Flows (OOF) as defined by the OECD.

2 All interviews conducted for this study were carried out with the informed consent of the participants.

3 The Marshall Plan, officially known as the European Recovery Programme (ERP), was a significant development initiative launched by the US in 1948. Between 1948 and 1952, over USD 13 billion were allocated to finance the economic recovery of Western European countries, which were organised under the umbrella of the Organisations for European Economic Cooperation and had been devastated by World War II (Wood 1986, 29).

4 The Lomé Convention was a series of agreements between a group of African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries and the European Economic Community (EEC). It provided African states with increased financial assistance, trade preferences, stabilisation of export earnings and – perhaps most importantly – bargaining power. The Lomé I Convention (signed in 1975) unilaterally granted nearly unrestricted access to the EEC’s market for the majority of goods originating from ACP countries.

5 A set of principles and guidelines established during the High-Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness in Paris in 2005.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Inesta Brunel Lendzoumbou

Inesta Brunel Lendzoumbou is a PhD candidate in International Relations at the Zhou Enlai School of Government, Nankai University, Tianjin, the People’s Republic of China.