Every year, low- and middle-income countries receive $30 billion in loans and other aid from multilateral agencies. Such aid traditionally comes with strict conditions, the effectiveness of which has been widely debated for the past few decades. Do conditions promote accountability and development impacts? At what cost to the recipient country’s institutions or political independence? The debate on conditionality has been reignited by the recent surge in loans from new sources, including China, that impose few to no conditions on recipient countries.

At this event, Miguel discussed current tensions, building on the example of a large-scale, foreign-aid funded electrification program in Kenya.

Photo credit: Rod Searcy/Stanford King Center on Global Development