BRIDGE OR BARRIER? INTERNATIONAL AID IN AFRICA

William Favell

This study investigates whether the empirical level at which aid is evaluated, macro versus micro, systematically shapes what we conclude about aid’s capacity to support trust in conflict-affected settings. Trust is treated as a central component of social cohesion that conditions cooperation, conflict management, and institutional legitimacy. Yet existing evidence on whether aid improves trust is mixed, with large-scale observational studies frequently finding weak, null, or negative associations between aid exposure and trust outcomes. To reconcile this, I examine a framework in which aid is expected to mitigate conflict’s corrosive effects on trust, but macro-level data are structurally ill-suited to detect these effects because aid is disproportionately targeted to high-need, low-trust environments. Empirically, the study employs a multi-method design. It first analyzes geospatially linked Afrobarometer survey data and World Bank project locations across Sub-Saharan Africa to test the macro implications of targeting and conflict pressure. It then turns to two micro-level case studies that measure trust-relevant outcomes over time among populations directly exposed to interventions, distinguishing between interpersonal and institutional trust. Across levels, the findings show that macro patterns commonly interpreted as “aid failure” are often consistent with needs-based targeting into low-trust settings, implying downward-biased macro estimates of aid’s trust effects. Micro-level evidence, by contrast, is necessary to evaluate whether interventions generate localized change and to identify which dimensions of trust and cohesion shift within realistic program time horizons. The study’s core contribution is an integrated account of why aid may appear ineffective in macro-observational data while still producing meaningful, context-dependent trust-relevant changes at the micro level. The study concludes with implications for theory, evaluation design, and peacebuilding practice, emphasizing that mitigation effects in conflict environments are important and that credible assessment requires designs that measure meaningful exposure and change over time.

BRIDGE OR BARRIER? INTERNATIONAL AID IN AFRICA

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