Trade requires infrastructure  Trade does not exist in a vacuum. It needs a wider infrastructure to support it, e.g. roads, railways, ports, education to produce capable civil servants to administer trading rules, etc. For example Malawi as a landlocked country needs roads and railways to link it to ports in neighboring Angola and Mozambique. Without foreign aid, developing countries are not able to develop this kind of support, and so cannot participate effectively in international trade.  This is even more the case when it comes to creating the necessary legal infrastructure and effective civil service. Aid is not always in the form of money - it may also be given through expert advisors who help countries prepare for the challenges of globalization. Such were the efforts in the 1960s by the developing world, but they were dropped in favor of poverty relief. If restarted and restructured, they would yield much better results, without the fear of commodity prices dropping, enabling African countries to eventually stand on their own two feet. Corruption is a potentially huge problem as recognized by Sudan People’s Liberation Movement Secretary General Pagan Amum "We will have a new government with no experience at governing. Our institutions are weak or absent. There will be high expectations. Hundreds of millions of dollars of oil money will be coming our way, as well as inflows of foreign aid. It's a recipe for corruption.1" As a result it is not physical infrastructure that is needed but rather mechanisms for preventing corruption. Something that aid will always be much better at achieving than trade.  1 Klitgaard, Robert, 'Making a Country', ForeignPolicy.com, 7 January 2011, Retrieved 2 September 2011 from ForeignPolicy.com