SOAS Research Online

Abstract

A coalition of priests, politicians, and pop-stars are campaigning to ‘make poverty history’. They claim that rich countries have a responsibility to provide the money to do so. As a result, international development policy now has a higher public profile than ever before. Books on foreign aid have moved from the shelves of university libraries into the best-seller lists.1 Two of these best-sellers by Jeffrey Sachs (2005) and William Easterly (2006) present competing perspectives. While Sachs’ The End of Poverty: How We Can Make It Happen in Our Lifetime argues that ending world poverty requires a doubling of aid, Easterly’s The White Man’s Burden: Why the West’s Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good argues that aid is part of the problem, rather than the solution to poor countries’ problems. Aid practitioners typically find themselves somewhere between these two positions, arguing that aid has made a positive difference but, with some changes in the way it is delivered, could be far more effective (e.g. Riddell 2007).