Aid and Development Archive

When Meles Zenawi, Ethiopia’s leader of more than 20 years, died in August 2012, many anticipated significant and potentially destabilizing change. Past political transitions in Addis Ababa had been violent and settled at the barrel of the gun, so the precedents were worrisome. Meles’ eulogies emphasized his individual brilliance and his personal role in bringing development to the modern Ethiopian state. What would happen with the strongman gone? Could the strong and effective authoritarian developmental party-state engineered under Meles’ leadership sustain itself without him? Instead of instability, the ruling Ethiopian Peoples’ Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) quickly moved Deputy Prime Minister […]

The most recent replenishment of the World Bank’s International Development Association, a fund through which the bank provides grants and loans to poor countries, involved attempts to enlist more support from the so-called emerging donors—developing countries that have only recently begun giving aid to other developing countries. In an email interview, Sadika Hameed, who works with the Project on Prosperity and Development at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, explained how developing countries contribute to each other’s economic growth through trade and aid. WPR: What has been the recent trajectory of “South-South” trade? Sadika Hameed: Following the financial crisis […]