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Notes from the Author

Apologiae

My narrative contains many extracts from a wide range of experts, academics. I ask for

their indulgence in this.

*****

Rational debates about the role and direction of International Aid are distorted as this
person or that, this politician or that, this vested interest or that, manipulates public

opinion.

This happens despite the in-depth, professionally constructed studies and reports

that you, the experts, complete. A significant part of the problem in constructing rational

public debates is that so much of what you the experts produce never reaches the ordinary
person. That ordinary person whose vote is what fundamentally determines issues related

to UK International Aid.

*****

I have set out to provide at least one over-arching work that ordinary people in the UK can

turn to. Not so much a work to sell a definitive answer. More one that hopefully allows the
interested person to form a better informed, more realistic viewpoint.

To achieve my end, I have had to place extracts from your highly valuable studies
alongside other forms of narrative, and to do so in a way that might otherwise be alien to

your professionalism. The style of narrative I have adopted is not yours, but I believe it to

be an understandable one. I also believe that yourselves are mature enough to understand
my purpose. And based on the clear commitment to the whole subject area of

development in Africa that your own work shows, I believe that you will have some
measure of sympathy towards the objective of my narrative. If some of those interested

enough to read my narrative will take the next step and go on to read some of your own

studies, I will feel some sense of achievement that I have helped to introduce a slightly
wider audience to your work.

****

Throughout the narrative, I have used Wikipedia as a 'go to' source for definitions and
background information. That again is a very deliberate device.

There are many reasons why the substance of the many wonderfully illuminating
academic reports never reaches a wider audience. Just one of these is that the ordinary

person can never be expected to have access to the many publications that academics