Institutional Evolution through Development Cooperation: An Overview

Despite a significant injection of foreign aid since gaining political independence, most countries in Sub-Saharan Africa entered the new millennium as heavily dependent on official aid for sustaining socio-economic development. This record should be assessed against the backdrop, whereby throughout the protracted debt crisis of the 1980s and 1990s, the traditional donor community dominated the economic policy debates of a large number of heavily indebted countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, and it tried to exercise a firm grip on the process of economic and governance reforms in Africa, leveraging reforms for more aid in one form or another at large. As shown in Figure 1.1, where official development assistance (ODA) received is shown as a percentage of Gross National Income (GNI) by regional groups, this situation was quite a sharp contrast to the experiences in the East Asia and Pacific region (EAP) in the post-war years, where most countries managed to reduce their reliance on foreign aid over time, with many graduating successfully from the aid-recipient status altogether.