Up-market flats and “East Africa’s largest shopping centre”.
When looking at areas like Global Development and the “Aid vs. Trade” debate, it’s easy for students to simply assume that “Aid” involves richer nations donating money and resources to poorer nations which is then used to improve the general life and living-standards of their citizens (a sort-of “Comic Relief” version of Aid).
The reality – at least when it comes to nations such as Britain – is that Aid not only involves “donated resources” being used to support the behaviour, activities and share price of private Corporations (the idea of “Aid as Big Business”) it may also involve “development aid” going not to those who probably need it most (the desperately-poor, in case there was any confusion) but rather to various forms of speculative enterprises: from expensive residential developments, through up-market hotel complexes to exclusive gated communities designed for and inhabited by the super-wealthy…
