AID TO MOST OF SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA FELL IN 2005: OECD

Development aid to most of sub-Saharan Africa actually declined in 2005, according to new data from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Although total worldwide official development assistance (ODA) from donor countries increased over that period, the bulk of the rise was accounted for by Afghanistan and Iraq. If Nigeria, which benefited from exceptional debt relief in 2005, is excluded from the total, ODA to sub-Saharan Africa fell by 2.1 percent to USD 24.9 billion.

The decrease came in a year during which leading donor governments repeatedly vowed to ramp up assistance to the world's poorest countries. Leaders from the Group of Eight industrialized nations vowed at Gleneagles in July 2005 to double aid by 2010 -- with half of the USD 50 billion increase slated to go to Africa. UN member governments committed to a similar goal at 'Millennium+5' UN summit later that year. The evidence of a decline in aid flows led OECD Development Assistance Committee Chair Richard Manning to conclude that "donors will need to undertake major expansions of their core development programmes to Africa if they are to meet this target."

ODA from major donor countries increased by 32 percent in 2005 to a record high of USD 106.8 billion. However, much of this was one-time forgiveness of long-ago defaulted debt, including a USD 13.9 billion worth of relief for Iraq and USD 5.5 billion for Nigeria. Reconstruction in Afghanistan and Iraq accounted for much of the new spending on development programmes. Aid to countries affected by the December 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami amounted to a further USD 2.2 billion.
Notably, repayments on ODA loans exceeded new disbursements for the third year in a row.

The US was the largest donor in 2005, contributing USD 27.6 billion in aid and debt relief, pushing its ODA-to-GDP ratio from 0.17 to 0.22 percent. Although much of the increase went to Afghanistan and Iraq, some USD 4.2 billion went to sub-Saharan Africa (including Nigeria). If debt relief is excluded, French and German aid spending actually declined slightly in 2005 from the year before. Denmark, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden remained the only countries to surpass the UN's 0.7 percent target debt-to-GDP ratio.

The OECD data is available at http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/52/18/37790990.pdf.