Foreign Aid can be described as the act of transferring of resources, services, or capital voluntarily from rich countries to developing countries. The function of foreign aid is broad as it also involves the flow of loaned capital, requested from governments of well-developed nations to assist in development projects in poor countries. The borrowed capital is often expected to be paid back within a given period agreed between the donor and recipient. The loans are regularly dispatched by the governments of richer countries and it can be in form of official development assistance (ODA), which is thereby directed to promote in development of either economic, social, political or environmental aspects of a poor country.
Foreign aid in its general context however has always been known to be accompanied by conditions. This therefore brings to the discussion of conditionality, which can be illustrated as that act of attaching conditions while offering advantages inform of loans, low interest free loans, or debt forgiveness in cases where recipient are unable to pay. The conditions are set by the donors for the recipient to pursue given objectives that comprises of practicing of good governance, human rights, political or economic reforms and promoting democracy. These types of conditions are generally formed by the donor prior to establishing any aid association with the recipient. In the past years, there has been disputes of using conditionality as a tool for dominance or control. This particularly has been linked with Western donors to poor countries whereby through aid conditionality, the push for economic growth, political reforms and poverty alleviation have been arguably debated not to be effective. This paper therefore assesses the relationship of aid and conditionality. It can be evaluated in an angle whereby, poor developing countries are now seen to be shifting their focus to the types of aid that are not tied, meaning aid conditionality is an aspect that is starting to loose its appeal. The reason however can be attested to donors focusing more on conditions and dictating ways of governance or choices.
On this basis, the new emergence of donors offering aid with no conditions to poor countries is now the current trend, this is specifically to third world- African countries. Given the colonial history between the West and Africa; a lot of African countries have been critiqued to be suppliers of raw materials such as minerals and natural resources to their traditional donors- the West. This has been a controversial issue because they do so while still languishing in poverty instead of pushing for industrialization and economic growth. The emergence of donors offering no conditions to African countries has been the point of concern, as fears of repeating of past trends by taking advantage of African resources or promoting of rogue and corrupt African leaders has been an issue to reckon with. The study therefore seeks to establish the relationship of aid and conditionality, simply by analyzing if foreign aid can really exist without conditions, is it possible or is there a hidden agenda in the new model of aid without conditions.