In fact when you look a bit deeper, overseas development assistance can frequently be presented as an effort to relieve poverty, but in reality it is business development for goods and services of the donor.
Towards the end of an eight month project that I ran as a volunteer in the outer islands of Tonga in 2009, I learned much while sitting in the captains cabin of a derelict ferry.
The operator had previously been the Chief Technical Officer for the United States Aid program to Vietnam at the time when this was the single biggest bilateral (country to country) annual aid payment in the world, based on the significant harm caused by agent orange and America's war.
Money was spent, but had a myriad of conditions that had nothing to do with alleviation of poverty, rather enforcing supply contracts with American machinery despite the fact that everyone knew the Japanese equipment was much cheaper, closer and more reliable. My Tongan friend become contemptuous and went home to work with his family.
Senator Chuck Hagel sums it up: "We need to stop viewing it as aid. It's an investment."
In the last 10 years the US has spent $15 million in technical assistance for the energy sectors of developing countries. But instead of passing this on to the local countries, U.S. assistance has built a $50 billion annual market for private power - largely leveraged by US companies.
While the States contribute $30 billion annually to aid projects, on the scale of things, like New Zealand, it is well below the 0.7% of Gross National Investment (GNI) that rich countries agreed to contribute back in 1970. Only Denmark, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden actually go beyond this figure.
People in the states believe that 25% of their federal budget goes to aid and think that it should be slashed. The truth is that it is less than 1%.
The United Nations Food and Agriculture office calculated in 2009 that $30 billion would end world hunger. The United states spends $530 billion per year on the millitary and $130 billion on war.
A pure cynic would say that this abhorrent waste of money is an investment in US weapons companies, but even a rational look at this poses some major questions.
One of the biggest qualms I have with development assistance is that many grassroots projects don't have the capacity to fill out the application forms and write the reports. Those people in SIDS are too busy to increase their workload.
So we often see big sums of money donated from Europe to the Pacific Islands, but while there is a great need, it either does not get spent, or people end up driving range rovers rather than building water tanks.
In 2012 I was told that over $250 million Euros earmrked for Pacific development was sitting unspent in an agency. The biggest problem with this is that when budgets roll over, if donors see unspent funds they stop putting money in the pot.
I believe that funding and resources must be made accessible to local communities for them to highlight and action their own local needs. This can't be done just with high-level talks - the support will need to be flexible.
Project outcomes such as behavioural change or water quality improvement, although complex to design, can be made easily understandable for lesser - developed areas where education levels are low. They can even be made fun for children so that they engage in the process. Simple indicators of water quality and litter reduction - which directly improves resilience - can be simply understood.
I am writing this from Papua New Guinea (one of the least developed countries in the world), where oil, gas and aid have resulted in the fact that there is actually plenty of money around. They have said to New Zealand that they don't need our money; they need our expertise and systems. So we are training people in how to achieve behavioural change in littering, to stop people getting poisoned by plastic and reduce malaria-baring mosquitoes from growing in rubbish that fills up with water.
What other expertise might New Zealand have to offer the developing world? If you have ideas of skills to offer, please leave a comment or send me an email.