Center for Global Development: Aid in the National Interest: When is Development Cooperation Win-Win?
Owen Barder, vice president and director of CGD Europe and senior fellow at CGD, “identifies which types of development cooperation can be win-win, and which types of aid are seriously undermined by efforts to pursue the national interest — costing lives by reducing aid effectiveness.” Barder writes, “If our development cooperation is targeted mainly at the symptoms of poverty … it is hard to see how that can be made more directly in the national interest without giving up a lot of aid effectiveness. … But if we are aiming at reducing the causes of poverty … then there are more opportunities for development cooperation which are directly win-win. This kind of development cooperation is often not mainly about spending aid money, but rather about wider government policies which directly benefit both the U.K. and developing countries” (6/5).