Wishing my readers a wonderful year ahead. This post is about the book "Dead Aid" by Dambisa Moyo with references from the critical article "Banned Aid" by Jagdish Bhagwati.
In the affluent West, no public policy issue is more likely to produce conscience conflicts in its citizens than foreign aid. The humane impulse, aggravated by the unceasing television images of famine and pestilence in the developing world, is to favor giving more aid.
Well, there is another side to the aid coin. Emperor Jean-Bédel Bokassa of the Central African Republic used philanthropic capital to buy a gold-plated bed, and Zaire's dictator, Mobutu Sese Seko, spent it on personal jaunts on the Concorde. Scandals like these are inevitable and it has lead many to conclude that most aid is wasted or, worse still, that it alone is responsible for corruption.
In the past fifty years, more than $1 trillion in development-related aid has been transferred from rich countries to Africa. Has this assistance improved the lives of Africans? No. In fact, across the continent, the recipients of this aid are not better off as a result of it, but worse — much worse.
Dambisa Moyo describes the state of postwar development policy in Africa today and unflinchingly confronts one of the greatest myths of our time: that billions of dollars in aid sent from wealthy countries to developing African nations has helped to reduce poverty and increase growth.
Debunking the current model of international aid promoted by both Hollywood celebrities and policy makers, Moyo offers a bold new road map for financing development of the world’s poorest countries that guarantees economic growth and a significant decline in poverty—without reliance on foreign aid or aid-related assistance.
Dead Aid is an unsettling yet optimistic work, a powerful challenge to the assumptions and arguments that support a profoundly misguided development policy in Africa. And it is a clarion call to a new, more hopeful vision of how to address the desperate poverty that plagues millions.
The author, Dambisa Moyo is a young Zambian-born economist with impeccable credentials. Educated at Harvard and Oxford and employed by Goldman Sachs and the World Bank, Moyo has written an impassioned attack on aid and has won praise from leaders as diverse as former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan and Rwandan President Paul Kagame.
