EUROPEAN OFFICIAL DEVELOPMENT ASSISTANCE – EFFECTIVE OR NOT? - Human development outcomes in Sub-Saharan Africa with women’s empowerment as a conditioning effect

Abstract: Aid effectiveness is one of the keys to achieving development and approaching sustainable development goals. Considering the limited field of research on the overall development outcomes of aid, this study examines the association between European Official Development Assistance (ODA) and human development in Sub-Saharan Africa. Additionally, in line with the importance of conditions for development, this study also seeks to investigate if the association between ODA and human development is contingent on the level of women's political empowerment. The empirical evidence on aid effectiveness is mixed, yet most research shows negative results. Many components affect aid effectiveness; therefore, it is a complex subject to study. Research on aid effectiveness is mainly restricted to outcomes in economic development, and studies that consider context often focus on, for example, democracy and corruption. Thereby, this study attempts to measure aid effectiveness, focusing on human development outcomes. Furthermore, this study highlights the importance of context and includes women's political empowerment as a conditional effect. This will be accomplished by utilizing a quantitative method with cross-sectional time-series analysis, including data from 2000 to 2020 retrieved from the Quality of Government and OECD. This study shows that there is a negative association between ODA and human development. Additionally, the results show that the association between European ODA and human development, conditional on women's political empowerment, is negative. However, this study implies a shift towards human development as a proxy for development and exploration of the relatively new interaction term on aid and women's political empowerment.