Aid and development are terms with moving borders and much overlap.

Aid

Aid tends to refer to official development assistance and sometimes to relief efforts by private charities. The emphasis of the word is on "help" when it is desperately needed, rather than empowerment or long-term capacity building. It may be in response to a crisis, or

The urgency sometimes leads to a demand for compromise, with principles needing to be moderated in order to get things done (food distributed, and shelter erected and other logistical challenges

Note that some "aid agencies" are actually more focused on development work - the AID in USAID and AusAID both derive from "Agency for International Development".

Development

Development, or "international development," tends to refer to longer term projects to overcome poverty, through many means such as improving public health, education and productivity. These in turn have many facets - for example health is influenced by water, sanitation, handwashing, indoor smoke from cookstoves, nutrition and many more. Being longer term projects, there is less urgent empowerment or long-term capacity building.

See also

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