With the way foreign aid for poor countries is becoming more and more popular, you may ask why do donor countries render assistance? Are the reasons related only to the humanitarian motives? Or maybe there are certain benefits for “the generous” too? Obviously there are. There is a whole bunch of economical reasons that are hard to understand for a non-professional. The ones I want to talk about are in the political field.
By choosing the recipient of the aid, the donor country is picking governments that will be backing up its policies in the face of the rest of the world. It is logical that oppositionists will never get any help. For example, most regions of the Middle East can be definitely qualified as less developed. But if you analyze what countries are getting financial aid from America, for instance, those would be the ones that the US has concern for. Of course, those who do not support American external policy will not get any help from this wealthy nation. They might be getting it from the countries who oppose United States on the world arena, but whether they do is a totally different question.
With the outer inflow in their economy, less developed countries get a huge cultural inflow from their donors. It is very noticeable in the French relations with the country’s former African colonies, where the French culture and language are actively promoted.
As we can see, donor help is not being given away for free. There is a great political implication in it. There is no doubt that financial assistance is important for its recipients, but the benefits donor countries get from providing it can be incommensurably bigger in the context of the world policy.