Mar. 17 (GIN) - In a provocative new book, Zambian economist Dambisa Moyo argues that foreign aid in Africa, has been an "unmitigated political, economic and humanitarian disaster," an idea that "seemed so right" but is in fact "so wrong" that, like asbestos or the Hummer, it should be phased out entirely within the next decade.
“Why?” asks Sonia Shah in The Nation magazine. “Well, he who pays the piper calls the tune.”
Foreign aid, in some African countries, has become government's primary source of revenue, Moyo points out. In Ethiopia and Gambia, for example, a whopping 97 percent of the government's budget derives from foreign aid. Small businesses selling food, clothing, mosquito nets are cruelly shuttered out of business by avalanches of well-intentioned donations.
The effect is anti-democratic, destabilizing, soul-crushingly "malignant," Moyo writes, and "exceptionally corrosive" to government accountability, civil society and the prospects for economic development.
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Moyo is a global economist at an investment bank in London. She previously worked at the World Bank in Washington DC. She holds a PhD in Economics from Oxford University and a Masters from Harvard University. Her book, Dead Aid, is available through Amazon.
(Ms. Moyo will be at Global Information Network to discuss her book with Sowore Omoyele of SaharaReporters on Mar. 31, at 1:15 p.m. Venue: 146 W. 29th St., Suite 7E, New York, NY)
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