Aid spending not as high as sceptics say
The blogger and economist Owen Barder yesterday clarified the total amount of money spent on aid since it began in the 1960s. According to OECD DAC statistics, together donors have given $502 billion ($866 billion in today’s prices) to sub-Saharan Africa; a far cry from the ‘over a trillion’ quoted by aid sceptics, who may be relieved to find out it is in fact only ‘billions’ worth of aid that ‘hasn’t worked’.
Barder quotes that ‘The G20 countries have, over the whole history of aid, given less aid to sub-Saharan Africa than they spent on fiscal stimulus in the single year of 2009’.