No More Aid to Africa

Stop giving aid to Africa. It has not help in the past. It will not help in the future. In fact, aid has hurt the peoples of Africa. One might think that these concepts are from a right-wing, conservative political pundit. Or maybe some local man-on-the-street unfamiliar with the politics involved in international financial aid.

No. These concepts are from a book titled, Dead Aid, By Dambisa Moyo, a former consultant to the World Bank in Washington, DC. Educated at Harvard and Oxford, she is the leading official for Africa strategy at a major bank. Ms. Ferguson is a native of Zambia and has lived there most of her life. Here’s a summary of her argument against the continuation of financial aid to the countries on the continent of Africa:

“In the past fifty years, more than one trillion in development-related aid has been transferred from rich countries to Africa…..the recipients of this aid are not better off as a result from it, but worse-- much worse…”

Her book has hit the national scene in Great Britain list and is discussed in United Nations meetings. I have read excerpts from the book. Her arguments and conclusions are solid. I think that she may be right.

The continent of Africa has 54 nations and has an estimated population of over 967 million. The United Nations Population Division has estimated that over 400 million children under the age of 15 live in Africa. Millions of African households live on less then $2 US dollars per day. War and disease are annual affairs for many.

We have all read or heard this statistics before. However, these numbers seem to persist despite increasing financial aid to the continent. Moyo thinks that we (the global community) must shut off the faucet. Moyo argues that if financial aid ceases the governments in the African nations would turn to other sources of finance that would make them more accountable. Particularly to the people.

She may be reaching a bit far in some of her observations. Africa has a lot problems. Many of those problems (such as overpopulation ands AIDS) are not quite related to donations of money. Some of the problems are directly related to past occupations by European countries.

The book deserves a good study. We, especially African-Americans, need to analyze the world in new and better ways.