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date: 06 March 2021

Abstract and Keywords

There is now a vast comparative literature on Northern development assistance, its purposes, composition, structures, motives, and effectiveness. These writings often include French aid within their comparative framework. But they present a mixed picture of the French case, with qualitative studies portraying it as “deviant,” and variable-led analyses viewing it as “representative.” Drawing on specialist interviews, this chapter challenges these comparative perspectives and, at a time when fresh approaches to international development are desperately needed, paves the way for wider consideration of French ideas on aid. It begins with an overview of the comparative literature on Northern aid before reviewing the comparative scholarship on French assistance. It shows how these writings have missed out on the agenda-setting dimension of French aid, notably its capacity to act as a “model” for other donors and lay the groundwork for future comparative research. It concludes by reconciling “conflicting” views of the French case.

Keywords: France, Africa, aid, development, effectiveness, evaluation, poverty, comparative, blending, innovative financing

Gordon D. Cumming

Gordon D. Cumming is now Professor of European Affairs and International Development at Cardiff University, having begun his career in the Africa Research Department of the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office. A fellow of the Royal Historical Society and the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, he has served as a Professeur Invité at the Centre d’Études d’Afrique Noire, Bordeaux, and at the Institut d’Études Politiques in Lyon. He has published extensively on French, British, and European foreign and development policies as well as on civil society capacity-building. With support from research funding bodies, he has written books including Aid to Africa: French and British Policies from the Cold War to the New Millennium (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001), French NGOs in the Global Era (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2009), and From Rivalry to Partnership?: New Approaches to the Challenges of Africa (edited with Tony Chafer; Aldershot: Ashgate, 2011). He is currently on the Steering Group of Cardiff University’s Phoenix Project and engaged in an ESRC-funded capacity-building project with Welsh development NGOs.

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