Monetizing and Localizing Foreign Aid

This book investigates the uneasy coexistence of two current policy pathways within international development: to monetize aid and simultaneously to localize it.

It explores these paths through the experiences of the development experts who are treading them, notably those who hail from aid recipient countries, and those who engage with for-profit instruments and institutions. In focus are the institutional realms of consulting firms, development finance institutions and foreign state aid agencies involved in both for-and non-profit work. Based on over 100 interviews with development practitioners from Kenya, Tanzania and Sweden, as well as a range of other OECD-DAC countries, the book inquires into these professionals’ everyday work, voice and authority, employment terms, career trajectories, moral convictions and professional drivers. It synthesizes these empirical findings with a rich collection of internal aid documentation that rarely reaches public eye. Together, these inquiries offer a multi-layered exploration of capitalism, poverty alleviation and global North–South inequalities within contemporary foreign aid. Addressing fundamental shifts within global development, this book will be an important read for researchers and students within qualitative social scientific studies of global development and international aid.

Written accessibly and to the point, the book also highlights possibilities for change which would be relevant for public and private sector development practitioners and policymakers.

Molly Sundberg is an associate professor and senior lecturer in social anthropology at the Department of Social Anthropology, Stockholm University (SU), Sweden. She is also the director of studies for a multidisciplinary bachelor’s program in global development at SU. During 2007–2010, she worked for the Swedish state aid agency, Sida, in Stockholm and Kigali, Rwanda.