Posted on June 22, 2009 - by Gavin

Aid has not, does not, and will never, help Africa…

Daily Nation

RECENTLY, AID TO AFRICA has come under attack from the most
unlikely quarters — the Africans themselves. The most recent of
these has come from Dambisa Moyo, a Zambian economist, whose
recently-published book, Dead Aid, makes a convincing argument
against foreign aid to Africa. Moyo argues that Africans have for
too long lived in “a culture of aid” that has failed to reduce
poverty or promote economic growth on the continent. She calls
for the eventual phasing out of aid altogether and for making
African markets more efficient. Despite billions of aid money
being poured into government coffers every year, Africa continues
to remain largely poor because aid fosters corruption and hinders
the development of home-grown industries and solutions. Moreover,
aid doesn’t come for free. Most of it has to be paid back, which
means future generations of Africans are burdened with debt
before they are even born. Even when things, such as mosquito
nets, are given for free, they end up stunting or killing local
industries that produce those things, which leads to more
poverty.

Moyo proposes a mixture of trade, foreign direct investment,
capital markets, the bond market, remittances and microfinance to
lift Africans out of perennial poverty and to create the jobs
needed for Africa’s largely youthful population. For her insights,
she was named among Time magazine’s 100 most influential people
this year. But not everyone is happy with what she has to say.
Jeffrey Sachs, a leading proponent of more aid to Africa, who also
happens to be director of Columbia University’s Earth Institute and
founder of the Millennium Villages Project (one of which is being
implemented in Sauri, Kenya), calls Moyo’s arguments “farcical”,
claiming that if her ideas are implemented, millions on the
continent will suffer. Moyo dismisses people like Sachs saying they
suffer from “Western, liberal, guilt-ridden morality”, which has
made the continent “the focus of orchestrated world-wide pity”
epitomised by the likes of Bono and Bob Geldof. People like these
two have not just become the de facto faces of Africa in the West,
they are actually defining the policy agenda for the continent in
forums such as the G8 and G20. In an interview, Moyo called this
state of affairs “ridiculous” as it allows Western celebrities —
rather than African governments themselves — to formulate policies
for their own countries, a point that has also been made by the
Tanzanian academic, Issa Shivji. MOYO ARGUES FURTHER THAT, IF
Africa needs a partner in its development, then that partner should
be China, which invested $900 million in Africa in 2004, and is
more interested in trading with the continent and building
infrastructure that could propel the continent out of a
never-ending cycle of poverty. However, I must confess that even
though I believe that Dead Aid is a path-breaking book that must be
read by African policymakers, it is clear that the author has not
spent enough time on the continent (though born and raised in
Zambia, she spent much of her adult working life in the United
Kingdom, where she is based). Source: "http://allafrica.com/stories/200906220067.html" href=
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