BOOKS: 'Dead Aid'

• Article
• Comments ()
• Click-2-Listen

By Doug Bandow

DEAD AID: WHY AID IS NOT WORKING AND HOW THERE IS A BETTER WAY FOR AFRICA
By Dambisa Moyo
Farrar Straus Giroux, $24, 188 pages
REVIEWED BY DOUG BANDOW

Africa is a land of tragedy and hope. A continent of poverty and conflict. Filled with entrepreneurial people seeking the same opportunities as the rest of us.

Our moral duty to aid others in need is strong, but good intentions are not enough. In her new book challenging the efficacy of foreign aid, Zambian economist Dambisa Moyo writes that surely one would expect Western moralizers to adopt policies which help those in need rather than hinder them in the long run and keep them in a perilous state of economic despair.

Tragically, the Western moralizers to whom Ms. Moyo refers have done precisely the latter. Not intentionally, of course. But, Ms. Moyo argues, the $2 trillion in foreign aid to the Third World, much of it to Africa, has been not just ineffective, but counterproductive. Only by ending aid will the West give poor countries the chance to develop.

Dead Aid is a blockbuster. Not because its arguments are new. In fact, Ms. Moyo dedicates the volume to Peter Bauer, the late British economist who almost single-handedly challenged the foreign aid establishment decades ago. He wrote eloquently and often, setting the stage for Ms. Moyo. She also cites more recent critics, former World Bank economist William Easterly and Oxford economist Paul Collier.

What makes the book particularly important is Ms. Moyo. Born in Zambia, a consultant to the World Bank and a specialist in sub-Saharan Africa for Goldman Sachs, Ms. Moyo makes an African case against so-called foreign assistance. She has the credibility to challenge glamour aid and how campaigning for more Western money paved [the way] for the army of moral campaigners &8212; the pop stars, the movie stars, new philanthropists and even Pope John Paul II &8212; to carve out niches for themselves.

But her strongest objection is not to celebrity hypocrisy. It is to the negative impact of so-called aid to Third World governments.

Many excuses have been offered for the failure of poor countries to develop: colonialism, geography, culture and more.

While each of these factors may be part of the explanation in differing degrees, in different countries, for the most part African countries have one thing in common &8212; they all depend on aid, Ms. Moyo writes.

Foreign assistance has consistently failed to spark economic growth, she adds.