Analysing the determinants of health aid allocation in sub-Saharan Africa

Aid allocation studies typically find considerable heterogeneity in donors’ allocation patterns; be it for total Official Development Assistance (ODA) or sector-specific aid. This paper investigates the underlying factors influencing donors’ selection and actual allocation decisions for health aid, using health aid data from the newly-created Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) database; covering 9 major donors and 44 recipient countries from 1990 to 2011. This is carried out in three steps; first, we test the selection and allocation decisions of bilateral/multilateral donors. Second, we proceed to test for increased importance of the previous Millennium Development Goals (MDGs, recently replaced by the Sustainable Development Goals) after the Millennium Declaration. Third, we test the hypothesis that Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) have different selection/allocation patterns to traditional donors. The first exercise confirms that donors differ in their selection/allocation patterns, but they all select poorer countries as recipients. The second exercise shows that donors placed more emphasis on the MDGs post the Millennium Declaration while the final exercise confirms that the PPPs are indeed different in their selection and disbursement patterns.