An Analysis Of African Countries' Development Assistance To

For a long time, as traditional donors, western countries have played major rolesin the architecture of international aid, while the policy-making in the field ofinternational aid to African countries still weighs heavy in their foreign policies and isinterest-oriented. Although their aid and debt relief policies somehow works to somerecipient countries, old international political and economic structure constrains therecipients’ development, even worse, making some recipient countries into viciouscircle of "poor countries become poorer, while their development totally depend onthe aid". However, emerging countries like BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, andSouth Africa) become new donors in international aid. Unlike the old donors, theyview the recipient countries as equal cooperation partners. BRICS owns their specificcharacteristics of aid: they deliver aid directly to the needy countries without anypolitical conditions; they stress on the cooperation approach to reach the results ofwin-win while giving a lot of favorable policies to the cooperation partners; their aidfocuses on poverty-reduction area including agriculture, industries and construction ofinfrastructure. These approaches were greatly appreciated by the needy countries inAfrica. My article will discuss the great reforms the emerging donors brought to oldtraditional aid system by contrasting the new and old ways of aid. My article alsoanalyses the difference and uniqueness of the BRICS countries comparing to thewestern donors, exploring the ideas and actions taken by BRICS in cooperationassistance and their future internal cooperation on development assistance to Africancountries.