The global investments of a british international development agency

This chapter addresses the global spread of one international development agency which abides by certain statutory provisions laid down in the United Kingdom where the organisation was founded and is still based. Established in 1948 as the Colonial Development Corporation, the restyled Commonwealth Development Corporation (CDC) has always had as its raison d'etre the identification and promotion of development possibilities in peripheral economies. By 1980 the CDC had capital commitments totalling over £500 million spread throughout nearly 50 countries in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, Latin America and Oceania. In focusing solely upon the spatial attributes of this international development agency no attempt is made in this chapter to assess the success or otherwise of the CDC as a development corporation. Nor is detailed discussion possible on the particular organisational features and financial structures of CDC operations in the different milieu in which it is engaged. The information upon which the present study is based derives primarily from the annual reports of the CDC (1948 to 1980), a business history (Rendell, 1976) and an official British government survey on colonial development (Morgan, 1980a; 1980b).