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BACHELOR’S PROJECT ABSTRACT
THE IMPACT OF FOREIGN AID ON DEMOCRACY IN KENYA
(November, 2013)
This study seeks to demonstrate the aspect that foreign aid in actual sense does not promote
democracy. In retrospect, aid undermines the quality of governance by weakening the
institutions of accountability and instead promotes corruption, cronyism and market
distortion. It also makes governments more responsible to the donor agencies and
governments rather than the citizenry that gave them their mandate. This perpetuates neopatrimonialism (based on neo-patrimonialism theory) in most developing countries and
especially in Sub-Saharan Africa where leaders establish patronage links with specific
bilateral partners.
Foreign aid is given by the rich industrialized states of the Global North to the poor
economies of the Global South to aid in bridging the development gap. This has however had
the repercussion of dividing the global political economy into countries of the metropolis
(rich states) and satellite states (poor states). The study made use of the library data and
adopted content analysis to review the existing literature on aid, growth, development. This
assisted with identifying the gaps in the literature.
Content analysis of the literature from books, journal articles, economic surveys (Republic of
Kenya) and other related sources like World Bank records on aid disbursement to SubSaharan African states shall be done to show that foreign aid undermines democratic
consolidation and that it promotes corruption and institutional decay.
Based on the findings, our conclusions are that aid actually impedes democratic consolidation
in many Sub-Saharan African countries rather than the hugely held notion that it promotes
democracy. In addition, institutional decay and high prevalence of corruption in Kenya have
been associated with overdependence on foreign aid.
In fact, democracy in Kenya is as a result of other internally generated factors like ordinary
people getting frustrated with irresponsive leadership of their presidents from the time after
independence until now (Ake, 1999). This however does not negate the role the Western
donors have played in Kenya’s democratization process. The scope of this study is between
the years of 1990 and 2000 respectively.
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