Working the Compacts: Western Aid and the Consolidation of Authoritarianism

As Western donor countries came to focus on more easily quantifiable development outcomes, and increasingly close security ties were developed with Uganda, Rwanda and Ethiopia, their lack of progress on democratic political governance, rule of law and respect for human rights was set aside. This chapter examines how these developments helped their regimes secure aid to which few to no political conditionalities were attached. Their commitment to the Millennium Development Goals, in particular the paramount objective of poverty reduction, meant they could expect to receive Western development assistance in forms such as budget support over which they had greater control and the chapter links this modality to the problem of aid fungibility. It also queries the robustness of some of the development statistics they presented as evidence of their rapid development progress. With donors reluctant to introduce turbulence into relations with their African aid success stories, on those rare occasions they criticised the repressive methods employed by their African partners, the latter used threats to withdraw from joint security arrangements or indicated a willingness to defect to China which had become a challenger to the West for influence in Africa. The chapter shows how such tactics were usually sufficient to dial down Western pressure.