Motivations behind aid allocation decisions of European donors: The role of energy resource endowments in African aid recipient countries

The present study deals with one of the most significant current discussions in the international academic community concerning foreign aid and the purposes that motivate donor countries to give aid to developing countries. The paper studies patterns of foreign aid allocation of selected European donors, namely France, the UK, Italy and Spain, to African countries represented by Algeria, Kenya, Morocco, Sudan and Uganda. This issue has been studied before from different standpoints, but the influence of energy resource endowments in African countries on donors? aid decisions regarding foreign aid has not attracted adequate attention in academic literature recently.The hypothesis of the present paper suggests that African recipient countries with energy resources get more bilateral aid from the selected European donors, because European countries are interested in diversification of their energy supply and might favour them with bigger aid commitments. This assumption was made in connection to the Strategic Energy Review made by the European Commission in 2007 related to the security of energy in the EU. The main suggestion of this document was that the European Union needed an urgent action to diversify energy supplies from unstable regions (Russia and the Middle East) to Central Asia and Africa. It has been assumed that this statement, as well as the recent events related to energy issues (for instance, gas crises in 2006 and 2008 in Europe), could motivate the Member States to focus on African oil and gas producing countries as on energy suppliers for their economies. Among the incentives there should be mentioned growing prices for fossil fuels in the period between 2002 and 2007, growing demand for energy resources, as well as a forecasted decrease of oil and gas world reserves. By applying empirical research methods, various objectives underlying aid allocation are integrated in the single hybrid model which unites both developmental and non-developmental goals. However, this paper is not an exhaustive consideration of all possible purposes or every aspect influencing donors? aid allocation decisions.The final evaluation of data is made basing on two groups of charts. The first group includes 24 radar charts, six charts for each donor. This chart type is chosen, because it allows displaying not directly comparable categories. The second group includes line charts to trace the trend over time. This group consists of four charts, each of them displaying tendencies in annual ODA commitments from one selected donor to four of the selected recipients over the nine-year period between 2000 and 2008.Collected for the selected countries for 2000-2008 are analysed according to the principle of Just Plain Data Analysis for compilation and presentation of numerical evidence from multiple data sources to support and illustrate arguments about politics and public issues. References are made to both primary and secondary sources. Primary literature provides data on major economic, political and social data, oil and gas resources and production in African countries. The World Bank, the OECD, the CIA and World Mineral Statistics databases are utilized to achieve these data. Secondary literature creates a framework for the present research, justifying the research question of the paper.This paper does not discuss, or touches upon only marginally, the achievements and success of foreign aid. The history of aid giving gives only a background for the recent tendencies. The scope of this paper does not include multilateral channels of foreign aid, which gradually become preferential for some donors. It does not analyse all possible determinants of aid-giving patters and considers only limited number of recipient African countries.