Foreign Aid free essay sample

Foreign aid is usually associated with official development assistance, which in turn is a subset of the official development finance, and normally targeted to the poorest countries (World Bank, 1998). Foreign aid represents an important source of finance in most countries in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), where it supplements low savings, narrow export earnings and thin tax bases. In recent years the donor community has become more stringent about fiscal discipline and good policies, which has led to freezing of donor funds to governments that do not conform with aid conditionalities. The Kenyan government has experienced such aid cuts in the past. 1. 1 Definition The standard definition of foreign aid comes from the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which defines foreign aid (or the equivalent term, foreign assistance) as financial flows, technical assistance, and commodities that are (1) designed to promote economic development and welfare as their main objective (thus excluding aid for military or other non-development purposes); and (2) are provided as either grants or subsidized loans.