Showing posts with label aid. Show all posts
Showing posts with label aid. Show all posts

Dead Aid: Why Aid Is Not Working and How There Is a Better Way for Africa Review

Dead Aid: Why Aid Is Not Working and How There Is a Better Way for Africa
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Dead Aid: Why Aid Is Not Working and How There Is a Better Way for Africa ReviewExcellent book.
Dambisa Moyo was born and raised in Lusaka, Zambia. Her mother is chairwoman of a bank called Indo-Zambia Bank. Her father, the son of a South African mine worker, runs Integrity Foundation, an anti-corruption organization. Moyo is the former Head of Economic Research and Strategy for Sub-Saharan Africa at Goldman Sachs in London, where she worked for eight years. Moyo has also worked at the World Bank in D.C., where she was a co-author of its annual World Development Report.

Moyo is the author of "Dead Aid", an indictment of the foreign aid industry which was released spring 2009. She argues that Western aid to Africa has not only perpetuated poverty but also worsened it. In the book, she calls for all development aid to Africa to be halted within five years because it has brought dependency.

She insists that largely aid has held back Africans. "You get the corruption -- historically, leaders have stolen the money without penalty --and you get the dependency, which kills entrepreneurship. You also disenfranchise African citizens, because the government is beholden to foreign donors and not accountable to its people", she says.

Because they can count on aid, Moyo argues, most sub-Saharan African countries don't even bother to issue bonds. That would require a country's president and cabinet minister to sell their countries to investors. Moyo has a Ph.D. in economics from Oxford University, and her Master's Degree is from Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. In addition, she holds a Bachelor of Science in Chemistry and an MBA in Finance from American University. She lives in London.
Matthew Rees (WSJ March 17, 2009) points out that it is one of the great conundrums of the modern age: More than 300 million people living across the continent of Africa are still mired in poverty after decades of effort -- by the World Bank, foreign governments and charitable organizations -- to lift them out if it. While a few African countries have achieved notable rates of economic growth in recent years, per-capita income in Africa as a whole has inched up only slightly since 1960. In that year, the region's gross domestic product was about equal to that of East Asia. By 2005, East Asia's GDP was five times higher. The total aid package to Africa, over the past 50 years, exceeds $1 trillion. There is far too little to show for it.
Ms Moyo believes aid money pouring into Africa, underwrites brutal and corrupt regimes; stifles investment; and leads to higher rates of poverty -- all of which, in turn, creates a demand for yet more aid. Africa, Ms Moyo notes, seems hopelessly trapped in this spiral, and she wants to see it break free. Over the past 30 years, she says, the most aid-dependent countries in Africa have experienced economic contraction averaging 0.2% a year.
America's policy toward postwar Europe is often cited as the model for African assistance, but Ms. Moyo reminds us that the vaunted Marshall Plan was limited to five years and was focused on reconstructing societies ravaged by war. In Africa, she says, the aid spigot never stops flowing. "There is no incentive for long-term financial planning," she observes, "no reason to seek alternatives to fund development, when all you have to do is sit back and bank the cheques."
Ms Moyo is not alone in asking tough questions about good intentions gone awry. Rwanda's president, Paul Kagame, has said of the $300 billion in aid given to Africa since the 1970s that "there is little to show for it in terms of economic growth and human development." Senegal's president, Abdoulaye Wade, has expressed similar sentiments.
Much of "Dead Aid" outlines an agenda for Africa's economic development, such as expanding its trade and developing its banking sector -- that is, creating a reliable system of credit that will allow individuals to earn interest on their savings and businesses to receive the loans they need to grow. While criticizing outsiders for their misguided ideas, she does not ignore Africa's self-inflicted wounds. She notes there are steep obstacles to doing business there. According to the World Bank, nine of the world's 10 most hostile business environments are in Africa.
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Does Foreign Aid Really Work? Review

Does Foreign Aid Really Work
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Does Foreign Aid Really Work ReviewRiddell has done an excellent job to update his earlier work - Foreign Aid Reconsidered (a seminal work) to include the massive changes in aid that have occurred in the past 20 years, especially the shift to NGOs.
His depth of knowledge, both firsthand and theoretical, of development is clear from the very start. It is clearly a very, very well researched book.
The question he aims to answer is obviously huge, and he makes it quite clear that there are no yes/no answers. He deftly avoids over-generalizing, but does an incredible job to work with the limited and biased data that exists on development.
The greatest strength of the book is really as a massive, 500 page literature review. He is able to sum up, in a very readable way, the major debates on development's efficacy. In the end, he presents a very well thought out normative set of suggestions on how to fix many of the problems he highlights about aid - a refreshing piece of concrete steps (which he admits readily are only the framework, and subject to much debate). Yet I think it's very important to point out that, despite his catchy title, this is not your run of the mill, "How to End Poverty in 10 Years With MicroHydro" book. This is a scholarly work that looks at all aspects of aid, even though it seems aimed at a wider audience. There are no easy answers, but Riddell's analysis is penetrating.
Overall, its an excellent piece of critical development scholarship, and comes highly recommended for anyone interested or involved in development, from NGOs to academia. He plows through the numerous, unfounded myths that go both for and against aid through detailed reasoning and evidence. He avoids the trivial, surface level problems and goes straight to the systemic contradictions of aid.
If I was to sum up the message of the book in a few words - and answer the question of the title - it would be that, to Riddell, aid is working, but not nearly as well as it could.
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