Abstract
Over the course of the past two decades, South Africa has emerged as a new aid donor on the African continent. In so doing, it has sought to distance itself from traditional modes of development assistance by positioning itself as a development partner rather than an aid donor. In this approach, rather than targeted aid, support is provided in response to requests for assistance and without any conditions attached. Despite its laudable objectives, however, South Africa’s aid policy is somewhat inchoate, committed to a new paradigm of partnership, yet embodying elements of a conventional Northern model of donor assistance. Furthermore, much of the assistance dispensed is of an ad hoc nature, development aid is uncoordinated, an effective organisational infrastructure to support the implementation of assistance programmes is lacking, and so too is the capacity to follow up and support beneficiaries.
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Notes
- 1.
This amounted to an estimated US$309 million in 2015 (OECD, 2017b).
- 2.
Based on an exchange rate of US$1 to R12, R1.3 billion equates to US$108 million.
- 3.
Whilst the data do not reveal precisely where all remitted funds are going, the current profile of refugees and migrant workers in South Africa suggests the probability that most are being sent back to other African states.
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Tapscott, C. (2020). South African Development Assistance in Africa. In: Jing, Y., Mendez, A., Zheng, Y. (eds) New Development Assistance. Governing China in the 21st Century. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-7232-2_11
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