Dead Aid - Why Aid Is Not Working and How There Is a Better Way for Africa

[Catherine Vincent]

DEAD AID

Why Aid Is Not Working and How There Is a Better Way for Africa
Dambisa Moyo

In the past fifty years, more than $1 trillion in development-related aid has been transferred from rich countries to Africa. Has this assistance improved the lives of Africans? No. In fact, across the continent, the recipients of this aid are not better off as a result of it, but worse—much worse.

In Dead Aid, Dambisa Moyo describes the state of postwar development policy in Africa today and unflinchingly confronts one of the greatest myths of our time: that billions of dollars in aid sent from wealthy countries to developing African nations has helped to reduce poverty and increase growth.

In fact, poverty levels continue to escalate and growth rates have steadily declined—and millions continue to suffer. Provocatively drawing a sharp contrast between African countries that have rejected the aid route and prospered and others that have become aid-dependent and seen poverty increase, Moyo illuminates the way in which overreliance on aid has trapped developing nations in a vicious circle of aid dependency, corruption, market distortion, and further poverty, leaving them with nothing but the “need” for more aid.

http://www.dambisamoyo.com/

[Political Heretic]

1. Much of this "AID" like borrowing from the mob. It comes with conditions that make it impossible

To ever pay back, and attaches pro-corporate conditions of privatization and the export of resources that virtually garuntee the country will remain a "developing" country enslaved to the west - forever.

[Djinn]

3. exactly

It is rarely if ever anything like aid, it is blackmail pure and simple.

We're giving you 2 million to fix up your water infrastructure knocked out by the tsunami but you MUST use it to buy US products and employ US staff at much higher cost than locals could provide both for.

Then there's the fact that FAR FAR more money is extracted through debt servicing than is ever received in "aid".

[babylonsister]

2. 4/3/09: Obama sells out again!!!-- by acting to end global poverty and starvation.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x8319199

Just some help coming down the pike, finally.