Aftenposten prevents an enlightened aid debate

It was published a abridged version of this post in Aftenposten February 02.

In the past week Aftenposten has published two highly critical comments on aid, from Eirik Jarl Trondsen and Jessie King. The critics miss evidence that aid produces results, but the criticism itself is riddled with obvious flaws, and central claims lack documentation.

Aftenposten fails when they repeatedly let misleading and unsubstantiated criticism of aid into print. What is the point of editor-controlled media, Trine Eilertsen, if this is the editorial level of a newspaper?

Aid is working

Don't get us right. We are the first to say that there is a need for big refinements in Norwegian aid. For example, we should invest more in strengthening health systems, vaccines, social safety nets and cash transfers to the extremely poor. However, it is important that money should be spent even better, not that the aid doesn't work.

Because aid works. Over the past twenty years, Norway's contribution to one organization alone, the global vaccine alliance Gavi, has secured vaccines for more than 110 million children in poor countries. This is estimated to have saved nearly two million lives. There are almost a hundred thousand lives — more than a whole litter of Norwegian schoolchildren — every single year!

Gavi is an exceptional measure and only accounts for a few percent of Norwegian aid, but it is not just this part that works. That applies to the vast majority. In 2023, 9 out of 10 projects funded by the World Bank's Fund for the Poorest (IDA) assessed to have satisfactory results. IDA is the world's largest development institution and one of Norway's largest partners. The claim that aid is not working, therefore, does not strike. look Norad's post in Aftenposten 30 January for more evidence.

We need to put the scepticism of aid behind us

Although there are many examples of failed aid projects, as Trondsen points out, this is not the norm. By the way, there are many examples of failed projects in private business, health care, and school, without us shutting down business, health care, and school for that reason.

From Trondsen's posts, one can get the impression that corruption pervades aid. That doesn't add up. In fact, a study of World Bank aid projects in Africa shows that they increased economic activity in areas without Increasing corruption, while Chinese projects increased corruption. The reason for this is explained by the donors' attitudes to corruption.

At the same time, there are cases of corruption in aid and it undermines trust and development - and must be combated, but the approach to the problem should be nuanced and based on proven knowledge.

Kong's claim that “we take money from ordinary people and give it to the elite in authoritarian regimes” is also not true. In 2023, only 2.1% of Norwegian aid to national authorities in recipient countries. Most of the aid today is channeled through multilateral organizations such as the United Nations and the World Bank, and non-governmental organizations such as the Refugee Aid and the Red Cross.

Double standards

For some reason, there are completely different requirements for aid than for other policy areas. When we discuss school policy, it's about how we can get better results - not whether or not education has an effect. This despite many educational initiatives have a bad effect, and that many have experienced that school was negative for them.

And no debate about health care starts with the question whether health care works, although many treatments and surgeries has questionable effect. Not everyone have good experiences, but we understand that there is a difference between outcome measures and anecdotes.

Today's aid debate is reminiscent of when the climate debate was about whether climate change was real or not. And unfortunately it stuck sticks in the wheels for the far more important discussion of how We better prevent them.

In the field of climate, the majority media has made an active choice to elevate the debate further, past the issue of whether We need climate policy. We should do the same with aid.

Norwegian aid have great room for improvement. How we can help make aid even more effective is something that politicians and the public should devote far more attention to. Norad deserves salute for inviting such a constructive conversation, most recently in its post in Aftenposten Thursday. The NGOs should join in on this one. But it requires us to put behind us an outdated debate about whether aid as a whole works or not.

However, it demands that newspapers such as Aftenposten stop waging an outdated and misleading aid debate.