Non-DAC donors and the changing landscape of foreign aid: the (in)significance of India's development cooperation with Kenya

Abstract

The last few years have witnessed a growing interest in so-called “non-DAC donors” (NDDs), and China in particular. While this is understandable, there is some danger that the diversity of the NDDs is overlooked, and the debate becomes distorted by an overly China-oriented lens. The focus of this paper is India's development cooperation agendas and activities in Africa, and more specifically, Kenya. The paper argues that despite growing “noise” about the wider phenomenon of the rise of the non-DAC donors within “mainstream” foreign aid arenas, the DAC donors in Kenya are only concerned with China. The paper asks whether India's meagre development cooperation relations with Kenya rightly disqualifies it from the attention of the DAC community, or whether the country level is also an appropriate scale for strategically oriented dialogue and possible cooperation, India's modest development contributions notwithstanding.

Keywords:

• non-DAC donors
• South–South cooperation
• emerging donors
• India
• China
• Kenya
• foreign aid

Acknowledgements

I would particularly like to thank Gerard McCann, David Anderson and an anonymous referee for their insightful comments on this paper. Thanks also to all the respondents who kindly offered their time to talk to me; and to Justin Willis and the British Institute of Eastern Africa for hosting me in Nairobi. I am very grateful to the British Academy and to Newnham College for providing funding for this and related research.

Notes

1. This paper is concerned with state-led flows of bilateral development assistance, rather than private/civil society funding, through foundations, charities and NGOs (although recognising that these boundaries are blurred).

2. Kharas, The New Reality of Aid, 7.

3. Manning, “Will ‘Emerging’ Donors Challenge”; Rowlands, Emerging Donors.

4. ECOSOC, “Background Study for the Development Cooperation Forum.”

5. For example, Jaster, “Aid and Economic Development”; Lawson, “Soviet Economic Aid.”

6. For example, Hindley, “Aid to Indonesia.”

7. Neumayer, “Arab-related Bilateral and Multilateral Sources”; Villanger, Arab Foreign Aid.

8. Grimm and Harmer, “Diversity in Donorship”; Lightfoot, “Enlargement and the Challenge of EU Development.”

9. Manning, “Will ‘Emerging’ Donors Challenge.”

10. Grimm et al., “European Development Cooperation.”

11. Brautigam, The Dragon's Gift; Six, “The Rise of Postcolonial States as Donors.”

12. Manning, “Will ‘Emerging’ Donors Challenge”; Kragelund, “The Return of the Non-DAC Donors to Africa”; Mohan and Power, “New African Choices?”

13. Johnston, “Is China a Status Quo Power?”; Arrighi, “Hegemony Unraveling – I”; Arrighi, “Hegemony Unraveling – II”; Institute of Development Studies, “Asian Drivers”; Kurlantzick, Charm Offensive.

14. Altenburg and Weinhert, Trialteral Development Cooperation; Chahoud, “Financing for Development Series”; ECOSOC, “Background Study for the Development Cooperation Forum.”

15. Glennie, The Trouble With Aid; Woods, “Whose Aid? Whose Influence?”

16. Naim, “Rogue Aid.”

17. Jerve, “Asian Models for Aid.”

18. Brautigam, The Dragon's Gift.

19. See, for example, Alden, Large, and Soares de Oliveria, China Returns to Africa; Carmody, “An Asian-Driven Economic Recovery in Africa?”

20. For analyses from very different standpoints, see Sogge, Give and Take; Sachs, The End of Poverty; Easterly, The White Man's Burden; Tandon, Ending Aid Dependence; Moyo, Dead Aid; Glennie, The Trouble With Aid.

21. See Carmody, “An Asian-Driven Economic Recovery in Africa?” on the case of Zambia, for example.

22. Woods, “Whose Aid? Whose Influence?”; Glennie, The Trouble With Aid.

23. Price, “Diversity in Donorship”; Singh, India and West Africa; Agrawal, Emerging Donors; Chaturvedi, “Emerging Patterns.”

24. Jerve, “Asian Models for Aid.”

25. Jobelius, “New Powers for Global Change?”

26. DN, “Aid: Old Morality and New Realities”; Chanana, “India as an Emerging Donor.”

27. Vines, “India's Strategy in Africa”; Mawdsley and McCann, “The Elephant in the Corner?”; 2010; Mawdsley and McCann, India in Africa.

28. http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/News/Economy/Foreign_Trade/_India-Africa_trade_to_grow_nine_times_by_2012_Assocham/articleshow/3948475.cms (last accessed July 7, 2009).

29. Vines, “India's Strategy in Africa,” 159.

30. Vines, “India's Strategy in Africa,” 159.

31. http://www.eximbankindia.com/press310506.asp (last accessed July 7, 2009).

32. Broadman, Africa's Silk Road.

33. Sogge, Give and Take; Hattori, “The Moral Politics”; Smith and Yanacopoulos, “The Public Faces of Development”; Gallagher, “Healing the Scar”; Glennie, The Trouble with Aid.

34. Brown, “Authoritarian Leaders and Multiparty Elections”; Brown, “From Demiurge to Midwife”; Brown, “Donor Responses to the 2008 Kenya Crisis.” See also Weeks et al., Supporting Ownership.

35. Renard and Cassimon, “On the Pitfalls of Measuring Aid.”

36. Raffer, “Looking a Gift Horse in the Mouth”; Kharas, The New Reality of Aid.

37. ECOSOC, “Background Study for the Development Cooperation Forum.”

38. Price, “Diversity in Donorship”; Singh, India and West Africa; Agrawal, Emerging Donors.

39. Agrawal, Emerging Donors, 5.

40. Sinha, “Looking Beyond.” This observation was made under the Chatham House Rule.

41. Price, “Diversity in Donorship.”

42. Tharoor, “Address by MOS.”

43. Agrawal, Emerging Donors.

44. Agrawal, Emerging Donors.

45. Agrawal, Emerging Donors, 10.

46. Bullion, “India in Sierra Leone”; Beri, “India's Role.”

47. Usher, “India in Afghanistan,” points to the geopolitical dimension of India's involvement in Afghanistan (namely, its interests in Pakistan–Afghanistan issues and relations), undermining the claims of some that India's development cooperation efforts represent a complete break from the neo-imperialist approaches of the western powers.

48. Quoted in Chanana, “India as an Emerging Donor,” 12.

49. Vines, “India's Strategy in Africa,” 164.

50. Jobelius, “New Powers for Global Change?”

51. Raja Mohan, Crossing the Rubicon.

52. See, for example, the contested analysis described by Jerve, “Asian Models for Aid.”

53. Chanana, “India as an Emerging Donor.”

54. DN, “Aid: Old Morality and New Realities.”

55. Chanana, “India as an Emerging Donor”; Usher, “India in Afghanistan.”

56. Singh, India and West Africa; Harris and Vittorini, “Slow but Steady, Like the Elephant.”

57. Beri, “India's Role.”

58. Raja Mohan, Crossing the Rubicon; Jobelius, “New Powers for Global Change?”

59. Bava, “New Powers.”

60. Aside from India's role as a donor, there have been equally interesting changes in its place as a recipient. For example, India has recently paid off its debts to 15 bilateral funders, and large parts of its debt to the Asian Development Bank and the World Bank. In 2003 it announced that it no longer needed the assistance of the majority of its donors, although they are still able to fund NGOs in India, under government supervision, and through multilateral organisations. The remaining donors (Germany, Japan, Russia, the UK, the US and the European Union) are subject to considerable scrutiny and direction from the Government of India.

61. Chanana, “India as an Emerging Donor,” 13.

62. Chanana, “India as an Emerging Donor,” 13.

63. Vines, “India's Strategy in Africa.”

64. McCann, “Ties that Bind or Binds that Tie?”

65. Interview, Nairobi, September 2008.

66. Interview, Nairobi, September 2008.

67. Naidu, “An African Civil Society Perspective.”

68. This is a tension also being explored by Amrita Narlikar in relation to India's foreign policy more widely: Narlikar, pers. comm., 2009.

69. Interview, Nairobi, September 2008.

70. Vines, “India's Strategy in Africa.”

71. Interview, Nairobi, September 2008.

72. Brown, “Authoritarian Leaders and Multiparty Elections”; Brown, “From Demiurge to Midwife”; Brown, “Donor Responses to the 2008 Kenya Crisis.”

73. Anderson, pers. comm., November 2009.

74. Kenya Consultative Group, “Donor Harmonisation.”

75. Interview, Nairobi, September 2008.

76. Brown, “Donor Responses to the 2008 Kenya Crisis.”

77. Mawdsley, “Fu Manchu versus Dr Livingstone”; Brautigam, The Dragon's Gift.