Give and take: the changing landscape of world aid

A book by Cambridge University geographer Emma Mawdsley provides a major analysis of the ways in which the 'rising powers' of the BRICS and others are changing the development landscape. South-south aid and development cooperation have rarely made headlines" - From Recipients to Donors (Zed Books, 2012), an analysis of changes in the aid world by Cambridge University geographer Emma Mawdsley, starts with a key question: who gives foreign aid to whom? Not long ago this would have seemed easy to answer; the richer, industrialised, 'developed' countries in the north give aid to poorer 'developing' countries in the south. Mawdsley shows that this picture is not, and has seldom been, entirely accurate. Developing, socialist and Gulf countries have given financial and technical assistance to each other for decades, in some cases as long ago as the 1950s. At times this aid has been substantial (the Gulf States accounted for a third of global foreign aid by the late 1970s), and large numbers of countries were involved. In the past, countries like Vietnam prided themselves for the provision of expert advisors to other socialist countries, while Morocco continues to offer scholarships to West African students. But south-south aid and development cooperation have rarely made headlines and most academic analyses of aid - whether from economics, anthropology, geography or political studies - have concentrated on evaluating and critiquing North-South aid.