The development and challenges of aid relationships: where is international aid heading?

International aid plays a key but contested role in stabilizing the global economic order by helping ‘late developers’ (LDCs) to provide services and grow. However, it creates asymmetric power relationships between donors and recipients, which succeed when interests and incentives can be harmonized but not when they conflict, as they often do in fragile and fragmented states, producing non-compliance and failed programmes. The global aid system has responded to this challenge in very different ways since the second world war in response to decolonization, the neo-liberal revolution, and the need to address economic crises. We will provide a brief history of these changes, an analysis of challenges involved in reconciling donor-recipient interests, review recent attempts to increase aid efficiency through Political Economy Analysis and New Public Management, and conclude by identifying the challenges confronting EU-Africa cooperation generated by the COVID-19 crisis.