Does Development Aid Help Poor Countries to Develop? A Critical Analysis of Africa’s Situation

This paper examines the illusion of relying on development aid by least developed countries in their development agenda. The paper makes a theoretical analysis of aid by utilising a fusion of Dependency Theories and the Chinese dirge “give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime”. Using the historical, political, economic and capacity building contexts in Malawi as a proxy, the paper contends that development aid is not doing aid enough to development but that it could be perceived just as another masked trap to neo-colonialism. The paper hence recommends that developing countries together with partners of good will should help break this chain of neo-colonialism so that the end of the tunnel, meaningful development possible