‘The Swarm Principle’: A Sub-National Spatial Analysis of Aid Targeting and Donor Coordination in Sub-Saharan Africa

Abstract

Do bilateral and multilateral foreign aid donors target poverty? To answer that question, we present a framework for assessing the quality of aid targeting subnationally. If donors cluster aid in areas with concentrated poverty, or spread out aid in areas of diffuse poverty, then we conclude that donors are targeting aid well. Furthermore, because co-financing may be a mechanism that improves coordination and information-sharing among donors, we examine whether the frequency of donor co-financing increases the quality of aid targeting. Recently released sub-national georeferenced foreign aid data for all bilateral and multilateral donors are available in five sub-Saharan African countries, making it possible to map the placement of foreign aid along with sub-national poverty levels. Results indicate that foreign donors target poverty in some countries but not others, and higher co-financing is associated with lower quality targeting across all cases.

Aiding Dependency: a Cross-National Analysis of Foreign Aid and Tax Compliance

“…Jablonski (2014), cited above, also finds that WB and AfDB aid projects are allocated to areas in Kenya that share the ethnic identity of the president, a conclusion also reached by Briggs (2014). Another study found that the quality of bilateral and multilateral aid targeting varies across countries, with some countries having higher quality targeting of aid on need than others (Findley and Marineau 2016).…”

“…Thus it is not clear how the project funds are allocated among the project locations. To avoid losing a considerable amount of the aid information in the dataset, this project follows the precedent set by previous studies of sub-national aid allocation (Öhler andNunnenkamp 2013, Findley andMarineau 2016) by using project locations. Map 1 below shows the distribution of county projects within Uganda.…”

The Political Economy of Donor Control and Elite Capture in Arsenic Mitigation in Bangladesh

“…While donors may wish to exert control over when, where, and how resources are allocated, recipients may seek to capture those flows to advance their own political or economic goals (Milner et al, 2016). A raft of studies has examined these dynamics in a subnational setting (Briggs, 2017; Jung, 2020; Marineau & Findley, 2020; Reinsberg & Dellepiane, 2021; Song et al, 2021), often finding that donor aims for when, where, or how resources should be directed may be ultimately frustrated and that aid does not reach the recipients or fulfill the purpose intended by the donor.…”