[londons_explore]

Foreign aid is rarely a gift - in almost all cases it is a business transaction. It is given as a loan, or in return for some mineral rights, or for an important UN vote, or for allegiance in a war.

For the loan cases, the terms are often unaffordable, effectively handing effective control of the entire country to the entity who has the other end of the loan - it is the modern empire-by-debt.

[edbaskerville]

The Rwanda case cannot be told without Paul Kagame, one of the rare authoritarians who is also a real nation-builder, analogous to Park Chung Hee (South Korea, 1960s-1970s). He locks up his opponents but also has leveraged aid to really help socioeconomic conditions. E.g., the very close and productive collaboration with Partners in Health/Paul Farmer.

[alephnerd]

Kagame cannot be compared to Park Chung Hee or LKY. Park's economic policies actually helped South Korea climb up the economic value chain, though a lot of that was also due to Japanese technology transfers to Korea in the 1960s-90s.

On the other hand, Kagame's execution on economic reform has been a failure when compared against Uganda, as Uganda [0] has a significantly more complex (ie. higher value) economy than Rwanda [1] despite also suffering a severe civil war in the 1990s and dealing with the Idi Amin's kleptocratic rule in the 1980s.

[0] - https://atlas.hks.harvard.edu/countries/800/export-basket

[1] - https://atlas.hks.harvard.edu/countries/646/export-basket

[edbaskerville]

Thanks, that's interesting.

& that is a great website...

[sofixa]

No.

A lot of foreign aid is direct things like food, medicine, doctors, AIDS prevention programmes, vaccines for specific things, maternal care, containment of an Ebola epidemic, etc.

Do you really think that e.g. Kenya is voting alongside EU members because the EU paid for a part of a highway between two cities in Kenya?

Then yes, there are loans and grants for infrastructure things.

> For the loan cases, the terms are often unaffordable, effectively handing effective control of the entire country to the entity who has the other end of the loan - it is the modern empire-by-debt.

That's not true. The rates are very public, and while sometimes they are on the higher end, unaffordable is a stretch, and that's how loan rates work. It is inherently risky to give loans to a developing country with high corruption rates. That's why there are also lots of direct grants or direct physical aid with stuff instead of money.

The IMF also sometimes gives loans with strict requirements on market reforms, which can be controversial. Notably in the former Soviet/Warsaw pact bloc, economic shock therapy under instruction of the IMF had some devastating short term consequences, and in some countries led to mass dubious privtisations. In most though, it paid off and led to rapid and sustained economic and social growth.

[alephnerd]

Sadly you got downvoted to oblivion but you are absolutely correct.

I'm honestly disheartened by how much HN has degraded into Reddit now.

[bigyabai]

C'mon now, you don't get to break the guidelines when the site disagrees with you: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

  Please don't post comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. It's a semi-noob illusion, as old as the hills.