Writer Paul Theroux, in “Africa’s Aid Mess” for Barron’s, delves into the history of debates over Western aid to Africa, from Charles Dickens to Bill Gates. “The desire of distant outsiders to fix Africa may be heartfelt, but it is also age-old and even quaint,” he writes.
By contrast, Wronging Rights, a blog often critical of (poorly-thought-through) aid projects, has a brief review of AidGrade, which aggregates impact evaluations of a number of projects and sectors. AidGrade should be expanding its filter selection soon to search by location. The question is, will such statistical tools geared toward individual donors resolve the problems that Theroux highlights?