The End of a Golden Age of Aid Enthusiasm?

Alan Beattie's report in the Financial Times that aid to Africa has stalled despite the pledges made at the 2005 G8 summit in Gleneagles makes me wonder: will the aid community look back on the years 2001-2005 as a Golden Age of Aid Enthusiasm that was rapidly overtaken by reality?The years 2001-2005 were marked by the reaction to 9/11 (we must drain the terror swamp), the Big Push of Jeff Sachs as intellectual leader of the UN-inspired Millennium Development Goals movement; the sympathetic response of the faith-based community to the AIDS pandemic and to the challenge of ending global poverty in general; the invention by President Bush of the Millennium Challenge Account (see also CGD's MCA Monitor) and PEPFAR (see also our HIV/AIDS Monitor ); the creation of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria (see also Challenges and Opportunities for the New Executive Director of the Global Fund; the founding and instant influence of the Gates Foundation; the entry of the new philanthropists including Google.org and Omidyar.net; Tony Blair's Commission on Africa; Gordon Brown's promise that the UK would commit billions to education; President Chirac's initiative for an aviation tax to finance the fight against poverty; the MDRI (Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative) for 100 percent (and not just 90 percent) relief. . . and . . no doubt I have not remembered everything.The seeds of the Golden Age were planted by the Jubilee movement's successful push for debt reduction for the poorest countries, of which the MDRI might later be seen as the final flowering.Does the evidence that aid to Africa is not rising anymore signal the beginning of the end of the Golden Age? If so, why? Concern about aid effectiveness (an "Easterly" effect)?; lack of good "results" except in health? (see Millions Saved); antibodies to the Big Push and rising nervousness about exposure as 2015 deadline for achieving the MDGs looms closer (an unintended "Sachs" effect)?; aging and fiscal worries in donor countries?; the distraction of the war in Iraq and nuclear capability in Iran and North Korea?Are we really at the end of a Golden Age of Aid Enthusiasm? If so, why? And what would that mean for development? What do you think?