Private Flows and Foreign Aid

The fundamental issue that I have tried to investigate in this book is how far the people of the poorest and most aid-dependent countries can begin to move beyond their need for foreign aid and, thereby, assume or resume sovereignty over their development process. One pathway to this objective is for poor economies to incorporate diaspora resources as a complement to expanding their own. Taking account of this, one plausible solution for development assistance might be a “re-emphasis.” This might mean, for example, retaining the current direction of assistance but shifting a little bit. New Aid could be repackaged to support more those private flows – moving for example from “aid for capacity building” to a new solution called “aid for remittances.” Thus, the story would go that the poorest countries need to leverage the full menu of resources – both public and private, and aid needs to be there to help them to do it.