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Background
Aid, also known as the voluntary transfer of resources from a donor to a recipient, has been one of the main interests of international relations over the past half century (Ovaska 2003, Mosse & Lewis 2005).
Whether in the context of development assistance, which focuses on aid provided by governments and other agencies to support the economic, environmental, social and political development of developing countries, or in the context of humanitarian aid, which focuses on short-term logistical assistance to people in need of help, developed countries have transferred large amounts of resources bilaterally, multilaterally, formally and informally to countries in the South to support their development prospects (Economides et al. 2008).
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The figure above shows net official development assistance in 2005, expressed in percentage of top recipients, and it is clear that the majority of this aid went to African and Asian countries. Among the largest contributors of ODA (official development assistance) in the world, Germany has always been in first place. In 2020, for example, the United States was in the lead with about US$35 billion, followed by Germany with US$28.4 billion, the United Kingdom with US$18.6 billion, Japan with US$16.3 billion and France with US$14.1 billion (Ilasco 2020).
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With such a huge effort by developed countries to address poverty and humanitarian challenges in fragile countries, sustainable growth or change in these countries should have been evident.
However, since the emergence of the North-South aid dynamic, there has been a growing criticism by several experts and observers that this aid is "dead" (Moyo 2008) or that it does not correspond to the needs of recipient countries (Nago & Krott 2020, Nago 2021).
In the particular case of the cooperation between Germany and Cameroon (about 134 years old, from the period when Cameroon was under the German protectorate until today) which is the main focus of Germany's effective international aid (GEFINAID), it is observed that Germany has been for decades the provider of the largest bilateral governmental development aid. In 2017-2019, for example, Germany provided more than €100 million in aid to Cameroon (Federal Foreign Office 2020). One would have expected that the living conditions of Cameroonians would have improved significantly with such large amounts of aid.
Paradoxically, the opposite is true. Cameroon belongs to the group of countries where both poverty and the number of poor people has increased the most in the world over the past decades.
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In addition, in Cameroon, a low-profile but very devastating humanitarian crisis is underway. There is a civil war of secession in the southwest and northwest regions of Cameroon where armed groups have killed more than 3,000 civilians and displaced more than half a million people. In the northern regions of Cameroon, the Islamist armed group Boko Haram has carried out more than 100 attacks in the Far North region since January 2019, killing over 100 civilians. The conflict between government forces and Boko Haram has killed thousands of Cameroonians and displaced more than 270,000 people since 2014 as illustrated by the photos above (Human rights watch ,2019).
Team
Co-founding & Managing board
Dr. Minette Nago,
CEO
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She holds a PhD in political science with a focus on north-south cooperation and sustainable development.
Marcus Paepke,
Financial manager
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He holds a Master in finance and economics and is specialised in financing aid organisations.
Cameroon´s office
Olivier Momo
Country´s representative
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He is a sociologist, specialised in rural development methods.
Contact
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