Dambisa Moyo
Dambisa Moyo
Dambisa Moyo2 February 1969) is a Zambian-born international economist and author who analyzes the macroeconomy and global affairs. With post-graduate degrees in business, public administration, and economics from American University, Harvard, and Oxford, Moyo currently serves on the boards of Barclays Bank, the financial services group, SABMiller, the global brewer, and Barrick Gold, the global miner. She worked for two years at the World Bank and eight years at Goldman Sachs before becoming an author and international public speaker. She...
NationalityZambian
ProfessionEconomist
Date of Birth2 February 1969
CountryZambia
Under the all-encompassing aid system, too many places in Africa continue to flounder under inept, corrupt and despotic regimes who spend their time courting and catering to the demands of the army of aid organizations.
I have dedicated many years to economic study, up to the Ph.D. level, to analyze and understand the inherent weaknesses of aid and why aid policies have consistently failed to deliver on economic growth and poverty alleviation.
We've reached a very low-level equilibrium where it's not clear whose interest it is in to develop Africa... It's not in the interest of those in the aid industry to develop Africa because then there'd be no more industry and 500,000 people would lose their jobs. The only people whose interest it is in is Africans, but they have no voice.
I wish we questioned the aid model as much as we are questioning the capitalism model. Sometimes the most generous thing you can do is just say no.
The most obvious criticism of aid is its links to rampant corruption. Aid flows destined to help the average African end up supporting bloated bureaucracies in the form of the poor-country governments and donor-funded non-governmental organizations.
'Dead Aid' is about the inefficacy and the limitations of large-scale aid programs in creating economic growth and reducing poverty in Africa.
The insidious aid culture has left African countries more debt-laden, more inflation-prone, more vulnerable to the vagaries of the currency markets and more unattractive to higher-quality investment.
A constant stream of 'free' money is a perfect way to keep an inefficient or simply bad government in power. As aid flows in, there is nothing more for the government to do - it doesn't need to raise taxes, and as long as it pays the army, it doesn't have to take account of its disgruntled citizens.
A nascent economy needs a transparent and accountable government and an efficient civil service to help meet social needs. Its people need jobs and a belief in their country's future. A surfeit of aid has been shown to be unable to help achieve these goals.
Too many African countries have already hit rock-bottom - ungoverned, poverty-stricken, and lagging further and further behind the rest of the world each day; there is nowhere further to go down.
The World Bank can only survive if it's spending money.
Thanks to aid, a distressing number of African leaders care little about what their citizens want or need - after all it's the reverse of the Boston tea-party - no representation without taxation.
There's not a single country that actually approaches economics in a pure, free market, capitalist way. I like the free market - but it very much exists only in textbooks. If I had a choice, and we could live in a very pure world, I would be a supporter of the free markets.
I was born and raised in Zambia in 1969. At the time of my birth, blacks were not issued birth certificates, and that law only changed in 1973.