Official development assistance (ODA) – or aid – is a small but conspicuous pillar of the international order, and its frailties are being exposed by COVID as surely as those of the other foundations of this order. The assumptions underpinning aid and its management have long drawn fire from a broad range of critics, but this has been particularly acute in recent years. This has resulted in dwindling confidence in aid as an instrument of development, giving rise to a series of sensible, if slow-moving, initiatives to address some of its systemic flaws. We argue that these initiatives are welcome but, in and of themselves, are incapable of lifting aid effectiveness to meet the lofty rhetoric of the expectations that it is burdened by.
