Dead Aid: Why Aid Is Not Working and How There Is a Better Way for Africa (review)

Individuals are inundated with commercials and advertisements depicting celebrities with poignant images and horrific tales in hopes that viewers will donate money to aid developing nations. This works. It works, because giving money to the poor is believed to be positive by western cultures. The commercials create an empathetic response for the viewer, perhaps exploiting feelings of guilt and consequently raising money to aid developing nations in Africa and other parts of the world. This has become commonplace and over the course of the last 50 years, one trillion US dollars of development aid has been transferred to developing African nations from wealthy countries in an effort to reduce poverty and increase growth. During the past decade projects such as Live 8, Make Poverty History, the Millennium Development Goals, the Millennium Challenge Account, the African Commission, the 2005 G7 meeting, and the 2009 G8 meeting have been created and facilitated to address this overwhelming issue facing the world, and more specifically developing African nations; however, poverty has not been reduced and increased prosperity has not occurred. In fact, in 1970 the poverty rate in Africa was at 10%, now it is nearly 75%. This calls the question what should wealthy countries, primarily from the West, be doing? Should they stop sending developmental aid to Africa, which may completely contradict the African cultural standard that giving to the poor is the right thing to do? Dambisa Moyo’s answer is simple, yes, and it is the foundation of her book, Dead Aid.

Dead Aid takes a radical look at what seems to be a timeless tradition, aid to Africa. Through her book she attacks the majority opinion that aid to Africa is good and calls for a progressive reformation of the current development strategy of Africa by the western world. Moyo, who was born and raised in Zambia, and earned her master’s from Harvard University and Ph.D. from Oxford University in economics, eloquently provides the reader with an unsettling snapshot of the issue. She notes that there are five main reasons that have contributed to why African nations are in such disarray and need aid to supplement their growth and diminish poverty. They are the geographical, historical, cultural, tribal, and institutional issues that the developing nations struggle with. She goes on to explain the foundations of these issues and then systematically deconstructs them, providing compelling perspectives that further invalidate the notions that aid is based upon. She goes so far as to boldly identify the popularly held western world misconception that Africans are culturally, mentally, and physically innately different from other world populations, and as such are incapable of improving their own lives without the assistance of outside aid. Moyo writes that the trouble with this perspective is that it reduces the perception that African countries can make progress toward sustainability and perpetually holds them in a childlike state (p. 32).

In the final chapter she outlines her plan of radical reformation, synthesizing strategic economic policy, grassroots empowerment, transformational leadership, and a little bit of tough love in an effort to produce a sustainable future for the developing nations of Africa. Brazenly, she offers the question what would happen if we stopped aid to Africa. She writes (p. 144),

What would happen? Would many more millions in Africa die from poverty and hunger? Probably not—the reality is that Africa’s poverty-stricken don’t see the way aid flows anyway. Would there be more wars, coups, or despots? Doubtful—without aid, you are taking away a big incentive for conflict. Would roads, schools, and hospitals cease being built? Unlikely.

She believes that in a world freed of aid, the lives of Africans would most likely improve, corruption would fall, entrepreneurs would rise, and Africa would begin growing. Her passion for the subject can be felt through her writing and you begin to subscribe to her idea...