While the past decades have seen a foreign aid field dominated by the world's wealthy countries who are members of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and its Development Assistance Committee (DAC), a new form a donorship has emerged, or more accurately, re-emerged. Aid funding from prosperous, yet still developing countries to other developing countries has drawn international attention, much of it from a critical perspective. A 2007 article in Foreign Policy labeled aid from China, Venezuela, and Saudi Arabia as both “generous” and “toxic,” while a recent cover of the Economist labeled China “The New Colonialists.” However, an increase in global aid to the poorest countries, delivered with fresh perspectives and an intensified spirit of South-South cooperation has many potential benefits.

With the largest population in Africa, Nigeria's political and economic developments reverberate across the continent. Nigeria chairs the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and is the eighth largest oil exporting country in the world. More than 40 percent of the region's gross domestic product is accounted for by Nigeria's economy, and the petroleum industry is responsible for about two-thirds of national revenue and a great deal of international interest in the country. Yet the government maintains a delicate hold on democracy, and the country has recently experienced political instability. Throughout 2006, militant rebels angry about the distribution of oil revenue have conducted a series of attacks against the industry, including kidnapping foreign workers, which resulted in the country's petroleum output dropping by 25 percent.

New foreign assistance strategies that aim to encourage ownership by recipients while still effectively reducing poverty are laudable. They offer the hope of increased financial support to overall global development-a bigger pie-but they also pose significant challenges to the family planning field: Will it be able to keep a slice of that pie?