CESifo Forum 4/200913 Focus A BRIEF HISTORY OF AID IN EAST AFRICA: THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF CONVERGENCE

The debate over the nature and impact of aid on the economies and policy strategy of African countries has been rancorous and protracted. A good detail of the focus has been on empirical studies of the impact of aid on economic growth including the role of Washington consensus policies in enhancing or reducing the effect of aid.1 Other studies have looked less at the direct effects of aid and more at the indirect effect of policy conditionality. Some have argued that economic growth has done poorly in Africa because orthodox policies were imple-mented while others have purported to show the very opposite.2 Still other have argued, based on modeling of donor-government behavior that adjust-ment was never implemented properly and that i