Overview Development assistance or foreign aid is usually taken as either too much or merely wasted on corrupt developing countries in spite of good intentions that donor countries have when issuing them. According to Brainard (2006, p. 6), both the quality and quantity of foreign aid has been below the expectation. Unfortunately, there are very limited cases when donor countries have been made to account for the afrermath of such aids. It is against this backdrop that there has been growing debate over the validity of most foreign aid in spite of the good purpose they are intended to. Foreign aid is usually remitted to recipient countries using various modes and channels. For instance, these aids may be made available to the needy countries through military assistance, use of humanitarian agencies alongside using government and non-government agencies. Additionally, foreign aid has been considered as one of the techniques that can help developing countries curb poverty and in particular, achieve the commonly known Millennium Development Goals. Foreign aid to needy countries is not a recent development. In 1970s, for instance, the world’s richest nations agreed to donate approximately 0.7 percent of their Gross National Income for official development aid to third world countries. This initiative was to be undertaken on a yearly basis in order to cushion lowly performing economies against economic factors such as inflation. As such, criticism on the fact that governments in developing countries do not use the aid appropriately has quite often been the subject of discussion among opponents of foreign aid. For instance, the aid that was given during this period of time had a worrying outcome. It was found that only less than five percent of donor recipients met their development targets. Realistically speaking, such failures may not be fully attributed to poor management of foreign aid in developing economies. Indeed, the donor governments also tend to lack proper mechanisms on how to advance funds and which particular projects to target. For example, a number of donors are believed to have failed to honor their pledges long after they laid down promises. According to Browne (2006, p.111), the United States is rated as one of the major donors of the dollars but also the poorest in meeting 0.7% which is the stated target. According to some opponents of foreign aid to vulnerable states, there is usually price attached to these dispatches. For instance, Brainard (2006, p. 6), argues that the aids given by donors do not usually reach the poorest countries. Instead, only those countries which are willing to part away with certain returns end up benefiting from the foreign aid initiative. Hence, those countries that are ready to give something in return to the donors are highly likely to be the sole targets of foreign aid. Needless to say, this results into wastage of resources on the condition that the recipient countries should only use goods and services from the donor nations which are often overpriced. Moreover, criticism on the aid can be justified on the basis that aid resources are usually dwarfed by rich nation’s protectionism. This is because the poor countr