Henry Zakumumpa
24 June 2009
opinion
Dambisa Moyo's new book; Dead Aid , has sent ripples across the globe, particularly for those in the billion-dollar aid industry for whom this provocative book ought to make required reading.
Moyo argues that development aid to Africa "is no longer part of the potential solution but it's part of the problem - in fact aid is the problem".
Moyo is a London-based Zambian economist with degrees from Harvard and Oxford Universities with stints at the World Bank and Goldman Sachs. He shows that over a 60-year period , $1 trillion in development aid has been sunk into African countries with nothing to show for it in the recipient countries.
Dead Aid maintains that aid money goes down the drain of corruption and props up despotic African regimes which are more concerned about appeasing paying donors rather than the disenfranchised populations they lead. Moyo argues that development aid leads to market distortions, perpetuates an aid dependency syndrome in Africa and that enterprise, innovation and entrepreneurship suffer as a result when all African leaders have to do is 'wait to bank cheques'.
Moyo's argument that aid is counter-productive is hardly original and William Easterly in earlier, more illustrious endeavours, White Man's Burden and The Elusive Quest for Growth and Paul Collier's The Bottom Billion make even more compelling cases. Even World Bank staffers have penned books around the subject such as Phyllis Pomerantz's Aid Effectiveness in Africa but Moyo takes it a notch higher.
'The notion that aid can alleviate systemic poverty, and has done so is a myth. Millions in Africa are poorer today because of aid; misery and poverty have not ended but increased. Aid has been, and continues to be, an unmitigated political, economic, and humanitarian disaster'.
Even African heads of states such as Presidents Yoweri Museveni of Uganda, Abdoulaye Wade of Senegal and Paul Kagame of Rwanda are making the case that trade, not aid, is a better hope for lifting millions out of poverty and deprivation in Africa and the rest of the developing world. Though trade is the new buzz word among African leaders, clearly foreign aid is still needed and its critics will be the first to acknowledge this much. The point being made is that aid should be more effectively targeted and it should not be seen as the panacea for bringing countries out of chronic poverty.
Moyo's call for the end of foreign aid altogether, which she calls for in the next five years, sounds at best hugely radical. In the place of Western aid, she calls for African countries to cultivate fiscal discipline by raising finance through international bonds or international commercial lenders which in the current climate of the global credit crunch is a proposal dead- on-arrival. Foreign aid may not have worked in Africa but to dismiss it outright would be to belittle the value of the Marshall Plan or US aid to Europe after the Second World War which transformed Europe or the case of American support to South Korea which is an emerging global economic power house.
Clearly, the debate ought not to be whether aid can be helpful but rather how it can be made much more effective and much more smartly targeted than it has in the past. Indeed, more innovative approaches to giving aid are gaining currency at a micro level and Western entrepreneurs interested in improving Africa's lot are thinking up some creative approaches. Aid is no longer purely humanitarian but has a tinge of business interest. For example, computer companies which want to make contributions to development causes increase sales through declaring that $5 will go to African charity from every lap top sale rather than make outright donations.
A Uganda entrepreneur in Denmark, through his initiative byc4.com, creates a forum for European humanitarian capitalists to lend money to deserving Ugandan businesses with friendly interest loans. The days of conditions-free money seem to be in the fog of the season's end.
In summing, Dead Aid's diagnosis on aid merits attention, the prescriptions offered, less so. African poverty is a multi-faceted animal with structural, cultural, institutional, attitudinal and even historical roots and defies simplistic solutions.
Mr Zakumumpa is a development analyst based at Makerere University
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* 16 European Nations . Met And Plotted On How They Would Rob Africa Of Its Riches.
* They met during two(2) Periods of time in two(2) places
* The General Act Of Berlin Conference (Nov, 1884 to February, 1885)
* Brussels Belgium to finalize SECRET agreements ( Nov, 1889 to July 1890)
* The Book “King Leopold’s Ghost (1998) by Adam Hochschild documents some of This information.
The following Nations (Households) - Planned how they would divide among themselves our AFRICAN Riches.
1) Austria-Hungary - Francis Joseph I Charles - August 18,… [Read Full Text]
The problem with this article is that it assumes that all African countries have the same: problems (although we share certain common problems e.g. curroption), amount of mineral resources, man power, or political stability. Therefore, it makes it difficult for me to say that Aid should stop for all the countries in Africa.
The best way is to analyse each country individually. I know of one country I believe should stop receiving Aid and that it Nigeria. Despite any Aid received in the past, the greedy still find a way of benefiting themselves so with or without Aid the people… [Read Full Text]
Correction I said 1 TRILLION while it is 1 BILLION but it is a lot of money anyway..
Aid as presently constituted should end, it,s not in Africa,s interest. Africa,s vast reserve of stolen funds in western banks should as a matter of urgency be returned to help with the process of national development across Africa,that,ll be more effective than the useless aid being brought in and subsequently repatriated through the back door using their equally useless N.G.O,s. KEEP YOUR AID, RETURN STOLEN FUNDS IN YOUR WATCH.
Ninety-five percent of NGOs in Africa are either EU, American or UN owned. They Channel Aid through their own NGOs. Call them Western GONGOs if you like. Apart from the WTO, IMF imbalance regulations, most of the Aid is characterised by paying huge sum of expertriate fee to their so call directors and field officers, 4x4 cars, exquisite offices or buildings around the capital and provinces and other fat bonuses.So you got to ask yourself, what or who is the Aid funding? I have a friend who always launch tirades on NGOs, he says if he becomes president,… [Read Full Text]
Time to move on is now. Anything as drastic as cutting a cleverly devised sytem of keeping Africa poor and ignorant 'AID' should definitely be cut. We are to trade with the rest of the world as partners, not as recpients of aid. We need to go to a level of partnership,were we batter or trade for goods and services startegically to better our lot. This has been a very annoying reality,that despite Africa's wealth both material and human,we still receive aid!! With regards to leadership, For heavens sake we need to immediately strengthen our resolve to ensure right leaders… [Read Full Text]
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