Aid is a form of help which can be in the form of money, machinery, food or people. It is usually heard about after a natural; disaster or war however it also happens on a regular basis as the MEDCs try to boost the economies and reduce poverty and starvation of the LEDCs. Due to the demographics of the world and the uneven distributions of income due to the level of development in certain areas, it is usually the countries of the North such as the UK donating/giving aid to countries of the South such as Chile.
There are a few different forms of aid. They can usually be grouped into around 5 categories.
1. Food aid, for example, cereal, which is usually sent when the more developed countries, HICs (high income countries) or MEDCs (more economically developed countries), have food surpluses so therefore can afford to donate their surplus to the LICs or LEDCs (low income countries or less economically developed countries). It is also due to the fact that some LEDCs cannot produce all the food they need because of the lack of fertilised land to grow crops. So with this form of aid the LEDCs benefit directly from the inefficiency and wastage of the MEDCs.
2. Financial aid, which could be a loan or a grant to help the LEDCs kick-start their economies and help the country to develop and reach its objectives which could be to reduce poverty, or maybe to increase technological development so that they can keep up with the advances in the MEDCs.
3. Volunteers and/or experts, people such as teachers or military personnel. These people will travel to the area in need of aid and help by teaching to raise the educational standards of these areas. This is with the hope that it will increase the employability of future generations and give them the basic skill set of reading and writing.
4. Technical Equipment, such as tractors or medical apparatus, can help the locals of the LEDCs grow crops in the correct conditions or help with possible illnesses that may arise due to the lack of clean sanitation and drinking water in some of the areas requiring aid.
5. Emergency aid, the type we usually hear about, when food and clothing are sent to countries in response to a war, or an earthquake, or other natural disasters. This type of aid is most vital in helping to save the lives of the people in these areas, without this aid, LEDCs would find it near impossible to recover from natural disasters, such as we saw recently in Haiti, in 2010, when over £1,526,956,768 or $ 2,422,202,996 worth of aid was sent. Be it in any of the above 5 forms.
However, it is not just the government of these countries that send aid. Aid can be sent in 4 ways, and from different places/people. It can be multilateral aid which is where countries send their aid via an international agency such as the World Bank. Or it could be bilateral aid which is where the aid is sent directly from one country to another, for example the UK to Chile. Banks can also give aid as loans however these have to be repaid. One more type of aid is from Voluntary Organisations such as Oxfam - who do not belong to a government, but are instead self-funded and these organisations often give their aid to the areas the official governments don't help.
But, why is it that MEDCs are so keen to give aid? Is it just to help out those worse off than that of MEDCs? Or is it to benefit themselves? Conditional aid is aid that is not free, and has 'strings' attached. For example, the money donated may be 'tied' which is where the money received, has to be spent on goods from the lender. 90% of US aid is tied to buying US goods and services, thus increasing the country’s exports and giving the country a better Balance of Payments figure. It is also that loans given have to be repaid, with interest thereby costing the beneficiary money rather than saving it money. Aid can often have political strings attached to it as well, with some countries asking to build military bases within some countries receiving aid or maybe asking for political support in the UN.
A good example of conditional aid is when Britain gave over £70million to help repair Sudan's main power station, in Khartoum, that kept braking down. However, many of the parts need to help repair the power station had to be purchased from Britain, even if there were cheaper alternatives available, this is because the aid had 'ties' to British goods. The aid did result in the repairing of the power station and has benefitted Sudan's industrialists and those living in cities and urban areas.
