Revisiting a Classic- Part One

When Dambisa Moyo’s “Dead Aid” came out, it sent shockwaves in the world of developmental economics. It wasn’t exactly for its claim, albeit in a rather ferocious tone, that years of western aid had not worked for Africa, (that claim had already been made by other developmental economists such as William Easterly), it was because here was an African academic finally unequivocally stating this fact. The fact that she was born in Zambia was obviously not lost on me and many others like me. Here was an African, indeed a Zambian who was telling the rest of the World to keep its money

Dead Aid is a classic, not so much because it is ground-breaking, but because it flies in the face of every tone that your average African leader strikes. The book is unrelenting in its derision of western Aid, consistent in its assertion that there is another way for Africa and more importantly steadfast in its statement that Western style democracy is grossly overrated.

At the time I was reading for my Masters Degree in 2012, three years after it had been published, the ripples caused by this book had not yet died down. If anything, I got the feeling that my Development Policy Professor had me in mind when he included Dead Aid to the reading list for the semester. Every time he mentioned Dambisa Moyo (“Dambisha” he would say), he would quickly glance in my direction as if to obtain approval and I would sheepishly look away.

The presentations were a disaster though. Tired of seeing pictures of black African kids with bloated bellies and flies liberally perched on their faces in various PowerPoint presentations, someone addressed the elephant in the room.

“Couldn’t you find other examples of poverty from the internet? Just Google Vietnam or Cambodia” someone suggested, cue one huge argument.

So what have we learned from Dambisa Moyo?

Well for one she subscribes to the idea of benevolent dictators (citing the examples of Korea, Malaysia and Singapore), although where to find one with the right balance of dictator and benevolence is currently a very big problem. As she admits herself, more often than not, you get too much dictator and not enough benevolence. Disturbingly though, there is evidence that even in some of the most repressive dictatorships, a modicum of growth can be seen that outweighs what has been achieved through aid.

We also learn a few disturbing things about Africa. Dead Aid has its fair share of anecdotes. Some of these anecdotes display an unbelievable level of impudence by our leaders when dealing with aid. Take for example Mobutu Seseko, then ruler of the Zaire (modern day Democratic Republic of Congo), who after receiving 5million dollars as aid from the USA decided to hire a Concorde for his daughter’s wedding.

What must be particularly frustrating for Dr Moyo I should think, should be the fact that despite similar voices to hers, there seems to be pretty little that has changed in the aid world from the time her book hit the shelves, well at least in the part of the world that I live in. For example, more than 40% of our national budget continues to be financed through handouts from donors, and despite rhetoric, there doesn’t seem to be a concerted effort to wean ourselves off such dependency. Our debt contraction, shows no signs of abating even as the little formal sector continues to be heavily taxed to shore up the coffers of a government strained on resources.

Part of the reason could be that the “aid world” has become so complicated that it exists as a world and industry on its own. So much that despite evidence (and Dr Moyo adduces enough of it), radically changing the way it works will require overhaul at an unimaginable scale. In addition, it would seem to me at least, that there is still an insistence at the highest echelons of policy direction that aid does actually work. We just have to do it right. I am sure they point to Europe and the Marshall Plan, they point to South Korea and other Asian countries and see evidence of successful aid stories.

In part 2 I will comment on the solutions that Dambisa offers and try to compare with what is currently obtaining. If I don’t conclude, then I will add a third part.