Currently Reading: Dead Aid

I'm currently reading a book by a really intelligent African woman, Dambisa Moyo-who, I might add, I really look up to. The book focuses on why aid is not the right way to go about stimulating and developing the African continent. In the book, Dambisa looks at how aid has developed in the past few decades, and she also unpacks the "industry" of aid. I call it an industry because that's the way i perceive the business of aid. I have had the aid conversation with friends from around the world, including those that work in the aid industry. I have always wondered how aid could be so gladly given to obviously intensely corrupt African governments. I've also just felt like aid only stimulates and strengthens the vicious circle of poverty in Africa. Governments who refuse to be accountable are often loaned money that they cannot conceivably and realistically pay back, and then more loans to pay off the other loans! See the circle already?

For Africans, corruption and underdevelopment is part of life, part of the routine. I once shocked myself when, in a conversation on the state of ruin that Lagos is in, I said that people in charge can skim a bit off the top, but could they please just get things done (craters in the road, infrastructure, clean water, sanitation). It's such a resigned attitude, and I really try not to be the person with that kind of attitude but sometimes it's really hard not to be that way. Anyway, back to the topic of aid.

So I haven't finished reading the book, but I just feel like some of what Dambisa says is just what I have been struggling to put across in certain arguments. This morning, I decided to read some reviews on her book and found some really intersting points of view. A review by Michael Gerson in the Washington Post is very defensive. I mean, I don't blame him because I'd also be defensive if someone told me all my efforts to save the world were actually self serving and weren't actually helping the people I actually meant to help- he feels like some aid does help; like the US Government's PEPFAR program that has helped many people, while shutting out those who advocate abortion and other ideals on reproduction and the female body which are contrary to the conservative ideas of the Republican Party of America (in other words, using aid as some kind of neo-. While obviously offended that Moyo has effectively rubbished the PEPFAR program, he doesn't give any other solid example of why Dead Aid is a waste of space in the aid discourse. He also dismisses Moyo's hopefulness for an Africa that doesn't rely on aid to function and to develop, and that, I think was the point where Michael Gerson proved himself to be a Counter-Revolutionary Tjatjarag Agent with White Tendencies. *har har i kill myself*

She doesn't tweet a lot-which is great because there are less brainfarts that way (I only have space for mine), but you can follow her on twitter or check out her website.

Economist & Authur Dambisa Moyo