Dead Aid  

From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia

Jump to: navigation, search

"I have read a book titled Dead Aid written by an African woman writer. The author talks about her personal experiences and draws the conclusion that China's assistance to Africa is sincere, credible, practical and efficient and is welcomed by the African people. I am confident that time will prove that friendship and cooperation between the Chinese and African people has a bright future."--Chinese premier Wen Jiabao, speaking at the 2009 China-Africa Cooperation summit in Egypt

Related e

Wikipedia
Wiktionary
Shop


Featured:

Dead Aid: Why Aid Is Not Working and How There Is a Better Way for Africa (2009) is a book by Dambisa Moyo. The title is a play of words on Live Aid.

Moyo's first book argues that government-to-government foreign aid has harmed Africa and should be phased out. It became a New York Times bestseller, and has been published in Chinese, English, French, German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Spanish and Dutch.

The Financial Times summarized the book's argument, stating "Limitless development assistance to African governments, [Moyo] argues, has fostered dependency, encouraged corruption and ultimately perpetuated poor governance and poverty." The book suggests that official development assistance (ODA), as opposed to humanitarian aid, perpetuates the cycle of poverty and hinders economic growth in Africa. The book offers developing countries proposals for financing development instead of relying on foreign government-to-government aid. Moyo has stated that her arguments are based on those made by pro-market economists like Peter Bauer, to whom the book is dedicated, and William Easterly. Harvard professor and historian Niall Ferguson wrote the foreword to Dead Aid. Rwandan president Paul Kagame wrote that "Dead Aid has given us an accurate evaluation of the aid culture today."

Chinese premier Wen Jiabao, speaking at a China-Africa Cooperation summit in Egypt, said "I have read a book titled Dead Aid written by Dambisa Moyo. The author talks about her personal experiences and draws the conclusion that China's assistance to Africa is sincere, credible, practical and efficient and is welcomed by the African people. I am confident that time will prove that friendship and cooperation between the Chinese and African people has a bright future."

In a review of the book, economist Paul Collier stated, "Aid is not a very potent instrument for enhancing either security or accountability. Our obsession with it has detracted from the more important ways in which we can promote development: peacekeeping, security guarantees, trade privileges, and governance." The pro-aid organization ONE Campaign disagreed with the book, stating that it calls to "cut-off all aid". Moyo has pointed out in a number of interviews that this is a misrepresentation of her ideas and that she is not criticizing humanitarian aid, and the Financial Times noted that ONE's campaign "at least partially backfired". The economist Jeffrey Sachs said more foreign aid is needed to improve conditions for Africa, but Moyo pointed out that when Sachs was her lecturer at Harvard it was he himself who taught that "the path to long-term development would only be achieved through private sector involvement and free market solutions".

In a 2013 interview Bill Gates was asked for his views on Dead Aid 's illustration that aid to African governments has not alleviated poverty but has instead kept the African economy crippled rather than supporting sustainable African business. He claimed to have read the book and stated "books like that – they're promoting evil". Responding on her website, Moyo stated "To cast aside the arguments I raised in Dead Aid at a time when we have witnessed the transformative economic success of countries like China, Brazil and India, belittles my experiences, and those of hundreds of millions of Africans".

See also




Unless indicated otherwise, the text in this article is either based on Wikipedia article "Dead Aid" or another language Wikipedia page thereof used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License; or on research by Jahsonic and friends. See Art and Popular Culture's copyright notice.

Personal tools