Maybe They’ll Get it Right Next Time…

Ashraf Ghani and Clare Lockhart, former UN advisors to Afghanistan, discuss how foreign aid often goes wrong during the reconstruction of “failed states” in an article on openDemocracy. Competition, lack of coordination between agencies, and an absence of accountability for the “aid rush” mean that massive amounts of foreign aid, however well-intentioned, “can become not a catalyst for the creation of institutional capacity but an instrument of division, resentment and corruption.” Discussing the failures of the aid response to post-war Afghanistan, Ghani and Lockhart also recall the lessons learned from earlier development debacles in Haiti, Kosovo, and East Timor.

Offering a succinct commentary derived from their new book, Fixing Failed States: A Framework for Rebuilding a Fractured World (Oxford University Press, 2008), the authors argue for “a new model” of foreign aid in failed states. Ghani and Lockhart advise Zimbabwe, as well as aid practitioners, to envision this new model and get ready for the work that must be done when Mugabe’s despotic rule is over. Aid groups aspiring to work in Zimbabwe should remember what works—and what doesn’t—when rebuilding a fractured country. As for its own part, Zimbabwe is rightly hopeful to look toward the future, but might be prudent not to expect too much from the organizations that will rush into the post-Mugabe void with more capacity-building schemes, land rovers, and professional jargon than anyone knows what to do with.