It’s time to wean ourselves away from donor aid

• The idea that aid is bad has been around at least since the 1980s when academics and activists began questioning
• Mkapa's book, Ending Aid Dependence urges developing countries to formulate strategies to exit from the aid dependence bandwagon.

4. Creating a domestic market and owning domestic resources;

5. Plugging the resource gap;

6. Creating institutions for investing national savings; and

7. Limiting aid to national democratic priorities.

One of the shortcomings in Tandon’s book is that it does not show how countries such as Malaysia, Singapore and Brazil weaned themselves off aid or what policies or strategies they employed to dramatically boost living standards and reduce poverty levels.

In many of these countries, committed leadership made all the difference, not democratic institutions. Often, it is not “people-centred democracy” that delivers high per capita incomes and reduced poverty levels, but visionary dictatorship as the Singaporeans and Chinese will attest.

The vision should ensure that economic growth does not increase levels of inequality (which can be politically and socially destabilising and which can adversely impact growth in the long term).

The vision must also focus on developing people’s skills and strengthening institutions that enhance productivity.

In addition, it should focus on eliminating corruption in order to gain citizens’ trust. Without these, it is unlikely that governments will be in a position to say no to aid.

Ms Warah is an editor with the UN. The views expressed here are her own and do not necessarily reflect those of the United Nations. (grasp@nbi.ispkenya.com)