Does the rise of Emerging Powers challenge the existing notions of development?

Résumé ou Introduction

With the beginning of the 21st century and the rise of so called new emerging donors within International Development Assistance, questions to what extent these new actors change the existing notions of development in general gained widespread interest among scholars from various academic backgrounds. Ranging from announcements of massive change which will affect the development paradigm as a whole to more nuanced analysis’s of the impact of these newly emerging actors , the academic discourse provides various answers to these questions. The aim of this article will be to examine and analyze the scope and significance of new emerging donors by examining in a first step who these new emerging donors are and what their actual impact on current development assistance looks like. I will argue that the term new emerging donors is misleading in terms of promoting the idea of a coherent group which is actually very diverse and in terms of the fact that these donors are considered to be new, although most of them have a long history in providing aid to other countries.

In a second step, this paper will focus on the example of China as the biggest new emerging donor by examining the underlying principles of Chinese development assistance, differences to the western donor community and the possible impact of Chinese aid on development in general and especially in Africa. I will argue that Chinese aid is largely intertwined with economic self-interests and its national foreign policy, which leads to a mixed picture concerning its outcomes and effects on development in general, although the overall results within the developing countries are rather successful. Furthermore, I will state that the existing flaws within the western development model as well as the situation in many African countries favor the recent success of Chinese aid and made it possible in the first place.

Finally, I will draw a conclusion based on the presented analysis to what extent new emerging donors will change the existing notions of development.