Ian Scoones, STEPS Centre co-director, has written a blog post about Chinese and Brazilian projects in Zimbabwe, looking at the complex relations between donors and recipients of aid and investment in the Global South.

“A new way of doing development cooperation is in the offing, and the hegemony of the western powers will be offset, some argued.
 
Well maybe, but not yet. As Jonathan Glennie pointed out recently, the Gates Foundation, run by a few very rich US citizens, provides more aid than China. But it is of course not the volume of aid that matters, but what it does – and in particular how it is linked to other forms of investment. This is where aid – seen by some (mistakenly) as a pure form of giving – gets messy…”

You can read the rest of Ian’s post on the Zimbabweland blog.