Technical Cooperation Flows in Africa’s Development Dilemma: Evidence from Preliminary Panel Data Analysis* Oluyele Akinkugbe Department of Economics and Economic History Rhodes University PO Box 94, Grahamstown 6140 South Africa yeleakinkugbe@gmail.com Abstract The relevance of Technical Cooperation (TC) for state and institutional developmental capacities in Africa has been a subject of intense debate in the past few decades, given its assumed potency in the drive towards desirable growth trajectories and attainment of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) as well as the other international targets. However, results of efforts in these regards have been mixed over the years— growth rates in Africa as a whole and in the respective countries remain far below desired levels, extreme poverty continue to be endemic and majority of African states are still classified as low human development countries by the UNDP. Hence developing countries and even the international development partners (DPs) have voiced their concerns about the development- credibility problem of the current aid architecture in general, and the delivery of technical cooperation in particular. Apart from dwindling technical cooperation flows in recent times, a large proportion of this fund is found to be used to service “consultants and experts” working in Africa. This has consequently cast doubts on the relevance of TC in Africa and led to increased attention on how to make technical assistance and aggregate aid more effective. Using panel data on some selected African countries, sourced mainly from World Development Indicators (WDI) Online, the OECD DAC database, the Freedom House database, and the UNDP Human Development Reports, this paper examines the trend and pattern of technical cooperation in Africa. Also, the paper examines quantitatively the nature of the relationship between a chosen indicator of development—HDI—and inflow of technical cooperation, incorporating relevant policy, institutional and other development enhancing control variables. The results from the preliminary analysis are mixed; they suggest that from aid research point of view, there is the need to examine more critically the different components of aid flows in terms of their effectiveness; as well as focus on the human development impact of aid as opposed to the current practice of investigating the overall growth effect of aggregate aid. This way, research outputs may help to distil the overall impact of the multifarious efforts of multilateral agencies such as the UNDP, the OECD, as well as the different bilateral agencies. This may also help in providing empirical basis in support of the different aspects of the Paris Declaration on aid effectiveness (PD) and the Accra agenda for Action (AAA). In terms of policy recommendations, the paper suggests that for technical assistance to be 'real', reform needs to be anchored in four underlying principles - putting recipient countries in the lead; giving them the freedom to choose their own development path; mutual accountability between donors and recipients; and country specificity. Key Words: Aid, Technical Cooperation, Development, HDI, Africa, Panel Regression *Being Paper Prepared for presentation at the CSAE/UNU-WIDER International Conference on Africa Development. Holding at St. Catherine’s College, Oxford, UK, March 22-24, 2009.