The Role of Foreign Aid in Combating Rural Poverty

As I travel to rural Armenia as a program assistant of a development project, I observe instances of poverty and increasing divergence in living standards. The divergence becomes more arresting the farther our car departs from the capital city Yerevan. We divert from the highway to visit a number of communities where project specialists are training local farmers on how to irrigate their land plots. I listen to the questions raised by the farmers about malfunctioning institutions, high costs of irrigation water, selective marketing opportunities and the government’s reluctance to support local agricultural production.Most of the training participants welcome the initiative of trainings in the scope of the development project but also raise doubts whether it is timely. How effectively will the knowledge they gain be invested to boost their incomes if the system does not provide incentives for them to be more productive? More pessimistic farmers question whether corruption at the government level and dependence on the rest of the world does not escalate as more foreign funded projects “enter” the country under the guise of developing it.