We live in a new reality of aid. Gone is the traditional bilateral relationship, the old-fashioned mode of delivering aid, and the perception of the third world as a homogenous block of poor countries in the south. Delivering Aid Differently describes the new realities of a $200 billion aid industry that has overtaken this traditional model of development assistance. As the title suggests, aid must now be delivered differently. Here, case study authors consider the results of aid in their own countries, highlighting field-based lessons on how aid works on the ground, while focusing on problems in current aid delivery and on promising approaches to resolving these problems. Contributors include Cut Dian Agustina (World Bank), Getnet Alemu (College of Development Studies, Addis Ababa University), Rustam Aminjanov (NAMO Consulting), Ek Chanboreth and Sok Hach (Economic Institute of Cambodia), Firuz Kataev and Matin Kholmatov (NAMO Consulting), Johannes F. Linn (Wolfensohn Center for Development at Brookings), Abdul Malik (World Bank, South Asia), Harry Masyrafah and Jock M. J. A. McKeon (World Bank, Aceh), Francis M. Mwega (Department of Economics, University of Nairobi), Rebecca Winthrop (Center for Universal Education at Brookings), Ahmad Zaki Fahmi (World Bank)

Debunking the current model of international aid promoted by both Hollywood celebrities and policy makers, Moyo offers a bold new road map for financing development of the world's poorest countries.

Assessing Aid determines that the effectiveness of aid is not decided by the amount received but rather the institutional and policy environment into which it is accepted. It examines how development assistance can be more effective at reducing global poverty and gives five mainrecommendations for making aid more effective: targeting financial aid to poor countries with good policies and strong economic management; providing policy-based aid to demonstrated reformers; using simpler instruments to transfer resources to countries with sound management; focusing projects oncreating and transmitting knowledge and capacity; and rethinking the internal incentives of aid agencies.

Foreign aid is about charity. International development is about technical fixes. At least that is what we, as donor publics, are constantly told. The result is a highly dysfunctional aid system which mistakes short-term results for long-term transformation and gets attacked across the political spectrum, with the right claiming we spend too much, and the left that we don't spend enough. The reality, as Yanguas argues in this highly provocative book, is that aid isn't – or at least shouldn't be – about levels of spending, nor interventions shackled to vague notions of ‘accountability’ and ‘ownership’. Instead, a different approach is possible, one that acknowledges aid as being about struggle, about taking sides, about politics. It is an approach that has been quietly applied by innovative development practitioners around the world, providing political coverage for local reformers to open up spaces for change. Drawing on a variety of convention-defying stories from a variety of countries – from Britain to the US, Sierra Leone to Honduras – Yanguas provides an eye-opening account of what we really mean when we talk about aid.

John Holmes was the UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs from 2007 until 2010. His work took him to some of the most troubled areas of the world: to Sri Lanka, Darfur, Somalia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, among other places, and exposed him to the harsh realities of humanitarian aid. Frequently he found that the UN's humanitarian programmes in these hotspots were tolerated but consistently undermined and mistrusted by both sides in any conflict, and its efforts to protect civilians and provide humanitarian relief frustrated by people working for purely political ends. Clear-eyed about the realities of development aid, Holmes realised early on that his role was to be a voice to the voiceless. THE POLITICS OF HUMANITY exposes, in often depressing detail, how difficult this job is, as well as analysing and exploring in great depth the wider policy questions of his role.

How US foreign policy affects state repression

Aid has become a tangle of donors and recipients, so unwieldy that it is in danger of collapse. This ground-breaking book presents fresh thinking that transcends the 'more' verses 'less' arguments. Drawing on complexity theory it shows how aid could be transformed into a truly dynamic form of global cooperation fit for the twenty-first century.

The current global economic crisisresurges the debate on aid to Africathe largest global recipientandthis comprehensive volume explores the premise, history, and foundation upon which the concept of aid is based. It considers aid's relationship to the broader development discourse in Africa, the politics and power dynamics of aid mechanisms, and how the emergence of powers such as China and India are redefining the global aid architecture. Diverse perspectives are shown from African social commentators, academics, and activists, including Demba Moussa Dembele, Patrick Bond, Samir Amin, and Charles Mutasa."

Provided for over 60 years, and expanding more rapidly today than it has for a generation, foreign aid is now a $100bn business. But does it work? Indeed, is it needed at all? In this first-ever, overall assessment of aid, Roger Riddell provides a rigorous but highly readable account of aid, warts and all.

American food aid to foreigners long has been the most visible-and most popular-means of providing humanitarian aid to millions of hungry people confronted by war, terrorism and natural cataclysms and the resulting threat-often the reality-of famine and death. The book investigates the little-known, not-well-understood and often highly-contentious political processes which have converted American agricultural production into tools of U.S. government policy. In The Political History of American Food Aid, Barry Riley explores the influences of humanitarian, domestic agricultural policy, foreign policy, and national security goals that have created the uneasy relationship between benevolent instincts and the realpolitik of national interests. He traces how food aid has been used from the earliest days of the republic in widely differing circumstances: as a response to hunger, a weapon to confront the expansion of bolshevism after World War I and communism after World War II, a method for balancing disputes between Israel and Egypt, a channel for disposing of food surpluses, a signal of support to friendly governments, and a means for securing the votes of farming constituents or the political support of agriculture sector lobbyists, commodity traders, transporters and shippers. Riley's broad sweep provides a profound understanding of the complex factors influencing American food aid policy and a foundation for examining its historical relationship with relief, economic development, food security and its possible future in a world confronting the effects of global climate change.