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Since 2015, when the UK legislated a target for aid spending, the nature of its spending on official development assistance has changed significantly. Government departments not traditionally associated with spending aid have found themselves in charge of disbursing aid funds as a result of that year’s spending review. The vote to exit the European Union has subsequently introduced a number of uncertainties. What considerations will be at play in UK aid spending after Brexit? What will become of official development assistance currently spent through European mechanisms? In what sort of configuration might the Department for International Development and other government departments find themselves? The focus of this paper is on how the vote to leave the European Union might affect the way the UK spends aid. It asks whether the legal framework for this spending is robust enough to withstand the demands that a new post-Brexit political and economic context will make.

This study investigates the effects of bilateral and multilateral official development assistance on Vietnam’s economic growth from 1986 to 2022. Utilizing the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) bounds testing approach, our results show that in the shortrun, bilateral official development assistance has a significant positive influence on economic growth, whereas multilateral official development assistance has a significant negative influence on economic growth. However, the empirical findings reveal that both bilateral and multilateral official development assistance have no influence on economic growth in the longterm. Given that bilateral official development assistance has a significantly positive impact on economic growth in the shortrun, Vietnam should strengthen partnerships with donor countries. Tailoring projects to align with bilateral donors’ interests can lead to more effective interventions. In addition, multilateral official development assistance has been found to have a negative impact on economic growth in the shortrun, possibly due to complex approval and implementation processes. Therefore, the government should advocate for more flexible project requirements and reduce bureaucratic hurdles. Simplifying the approval process can help accelerate project implementation and enhance immediate economic benefits. Moreover, because official development assistance does not impact on economic growth in the longterm, Vietnam should focus on sustainable development strategies that reduce dependency on external aid. This includes investing in human capital, innovation, and technology to foster endogenous growth.

This study re-examined the effect of official development assistance (ODA) of five major donor countries (France, Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States) on foreign direct investment (FDI) using panel data from 2003 to 2020. In addition to the system Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) with the gravity model, the Granger causality test and impulse response analysis with the panel VAR model was conducted. It was concluded that ODA did not necessarily have an effect on FDI since the 2000s. It is also suggested that the vanguard effect of Japanese ODA, as indicated by some previous studies, appeared mainly in the 1990s and may not be sustainable. The novelty of this study is to verify the effects of the ODA of major donors on FDI using new data from the 2000s onward, especially to reveal that the vanguard effect of Japanese ODA has not been observed since the 2000s. A limitation of this study is to determine only the presence or absence of a general trend at a statistically significant level. Therefore, further research on individual cases is expected to find how ODA has affected the investment decisions of individual companies.

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has become a leading contributor of foreign aid, in terms of percentage of gross national income as well as in total amount. Historically, Emirati aid was opaque, and little was known about the foreign aid portfolio. This changed after 2009 when the UAE began to submit detailed, project-level data to the Development Assistance Committee of the OECD. Based on a decade of aid transparency, this article carries out an examination of the political economy of aid provided by the UAE, comparing its portfolio to other donor countries. Particular attention is paid to analyzing three primary recipients of its aid (Egypt, Serbia and Yemen) and the implicit motivations driving those decisions. The majority of Emirati aid to these three countries was granted as general budgetary support, often in tandem with efforts to achieve political, economic and/or military aims. Based on the findings, an evaluation is made regarding Emirati narratives of South-South cooperation and its seeking of mutual benefit as well as critiques put forward within the literature countering this. In addition to critically assessing the details of an under-researched aid portfolio, this paper highlights areas for further study to deepen our understanding of the UAE's foreign aid.

This study examines the impact of aid-for-trade on decomposed total factor productivity, utilizing a panel of 54 aid recipient countries from 2003 to 2019. The study decomposes total factor productivity into technical progress and technical efficiency change by applying the stochastic frontier approach. Then, the study regresses decomposed productivity components on various measures of aid for trade. Empirical results indicate that aid-for-trade enhances productivity, although the total amount of aid itself does not have a significant impact on it. Regarding productivity components, cumulative aid-for-trade increases both technical progress and technical efficiency change, although yearly aid-for-trade increases only technical progress. Among aid-for-trade types, aid for supporting trade-related infrastructure and aid for building productive capacity boost technical progress. The results support the presumption that aid-for-trade promotes economic development by enhancing trade openness. The novelty of this study lies in revealing the link between aid-for-trade and the decomposed productivity components. In this regard, the study suggests that aid-for-trade enhances productivity growth through technical progress in the short run, which is transmitted to other countries through technical efficiency change in the long run.

We investigate the effects of short-term political motivations on the effectiveness of foreign aid. Specifically, we test whether the effect of aid on economic growth is reduced by the share of years a country served on the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) in the period the aid is committed, which provides quasi-random variation in aid. Our results show that the effect of aid on growth is significantly lower when aid was committed during a country’s tenure on the UNSC. This holds when we restrict the sample to Africa, which follows the strictest norm of rotation on the UNSC and thus where UNSC membership can most reliably be regarded as exogenous. We derive two conclusions from this. First, short-term political favoritism reduces the effectiveness of aid. Second, results of studies using political interest variables as instruments for overall aid arguably estimate the effect of politically motivated aid and thus a lower bound for the effect of all aid.

This study analyzed the impact of climate-related natural disasters (droughts, floods, storms/rainstorms) on economic and social variables. As the Africa-specific empirical literature is limited, this study used panel data from 1961–2011 on Africa. The study used a panel data regression model analysis. The results showed that climate change-related natural disasters affected Africa’s economic growth, agriculture, and poverty and caused armed conflicts. Among the disasters, droughts are the main cause of negative impact, severely affecting crops such as maize and coffee and resulting in increased urban poverty and armed conflicts. In contrast, international aid has a positive effect but the impact is insignificant compared to the negative consequences of climate-related natural disasters. Cereal food assistance has a negative crowding-out effect on cereal production. International donors should review their interventions to support Africa’s adaptative capacity to disasters. Government efficiency has reduced the number of deaths, and this is an area that supports Africa’s adaptative efforts.

Agroforestry – the integration of trees into crops or livestock systems – has gained increasing recognition as a strategic approach to enhancing food security, driving sustainable economic development, and supporting environmental conservation. Despite this growing importance, the dynamics of international aid for agroforestry remain underexplored. This study examines the status and evolving trends of agroforestry aid by analyzing data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s Creditor Reporting System spanning 1988–2019. The findings reveal three distinct aid pathways for agroforestry development, each shaped by diverse accountability and cooperation frameworks, with support distributed across five sectoral domains: agriculture, forestry, environment, energy, and rural development. Results demonstrate that the expansion of agroforestry aid is closely aligned with environmental management objectives, particularly climate change mitigation and biodiversity conservation. Donor-recipient analysis highlights variations in accountability mechanisms and development priorities, reflecting the multidimensional nature of agroforestry within international cooperation. By identifying the thematic patterns and complexity of agroforestry aid, this study contributes to a deeper understanding of agroforestry aid and underscores its potential to enhance policy coherence, strengthen sustainable land use, and build global resilience.

Purpose Agriculture is the major source of livelihood for the majority of population in Sub-Saharan Africa but its productivity is not only low it has started showing signs of decline since 2012. The purpose of this paper is to find out whether official development assistance for agriculture is effective. Design/methodology/approach The data for development assistance for agriculture are broken down into the major agricultural sectors in receiving countries. The empirical evidence is based on the two-step system, i.e. generalized method of moments, to assess the degree of responsiveness of agricultural productivity to development assistance. Findings There is a positive relationship between development assistance and agricultural productivity in general. However, when broken down into the major agricultural recipient sectors, there is a substitution effect between food crop production and industrial crop production. Better institutions and economic freedom are found to enable agricultural productivity growth, and to increase the effectiveness of development assistance. The structural economic transformation associated with agricultural development assistance is also found to be weak. Practical implications Allocation of development assistance for agriculture is primarily determined by need, although expected effectiveness also increases the assistance receipts. Agricultural assistance policies could focus more on building productive capacity to reduce the need while boosting effectiveness. Originality/value Breaking down data into agricultural recipient sectors and controlling for the potential spurious correlation under the assumption that more development assistance could be allocated, where agricultural productivity is already increasing due to some other factors.

Official development assistance has shown its limits in the face of persistent poverty on the African continent. Some think that the development aid policies adopted, better still, led by the West are incompatible with African culture. Others, on the other hand, believe that official development assistance fuels Africa's dependence on the West and therefore promotes its continued underdevelopment. Indeed, it is obvious that aid policies maintain an asymmetrical relationship between the two partners. However, although the Western model of development is opposed to the African socio-political archaeology, it is no less true that Africa is capable of experiencing cultural changes. This study proposes to explore two paths deemed to be able to make Africa flourish. It is first of all the integration of Africa into the West through the process of immigration in order to allow this continent to redefine its culture and thus forge a new way of perceiving Western science. Secondly, the highlighting of immigration issues in the equation between the North and the South of the Mediterranean is a game-changer in the cooperation relationship between the West and Africa. A relationship of symmetry, of equals, is possible for both Africa and Europe.