The potential role of non-traditional donors’ aid in Africa

Increasing South-South cooperation will result in more development assistance for African countries. This paper challenges the perception that non-traditional aid lacks transparency and contains little or any conditionality thereby undermining the development efforts of ‘traditional’ donors. Moreover, this paper examines the implications of the re-emergence of China, India, Brazil and South Africa as important ‘non-traditional’ donors to Africa on sustainable development and aid flows and governance. The author argues that maximising the development potential of South-South cooperation and ensuring policy coherence and effectiveness coordination between both traditional and non-traditional donors will be crucial. Moreover, African ownership of development assistance (traditional or non-traditional) is an imperative.