Comments on: Thoughts in the wake of Africa Day

By: Francis R

Francis R — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 09:52:59 +0000

Hi David
Interesting that your three examples of the more corrupt African leaders supported by the West are actually all supported almost singlehandedly by France…. I don’t mean too much by this but I find this discussion of a rather complex subject a little simplistic. Of course aid should be debated more – and Moyo is far from the first person to have questioned it, there are many others from all continents (not just white men) who’ve been writing about and debating it ever since aid and development has been around. I even remember a discussion from about thirty years ago which came to the conclusion that distributing development aid by dropping it in one dollar bills from a plane would be a better, more equitable way of doing it.

By: japes

japes — Sat, 30 May 2009 04:54:26 +0000

Oh dear, Phillipa must be a link in the aid chain. But I think the harsh reality of the book is right. The way aid is distributed into Africa is most beneficial to the companies doing the distribution, then greedy and corrupt apparatchiks (Phillipa?) in the government system and finally a tiny trickle gets to the needy. When it gets there it often displaces some subsistence trader or is sold. Every traveller into Africa has seen the US Aid grain, marked “Free etc” being sold.

But Africa should not NEED aid. With its bountiful natural resources, soils and climate it should boom. Why doesn’t it?

Rotten politicians who sign up rotten deals with external countries and companies; selling the countries resources for a fraction of their worth then keeping the cash. Not spending effectively on education, infrastructure, health etc etc but stashing it in a Swiss bank. At best they spend on palaces, stadiums, defence etc in deals riddled with corruption and kickbacks and which have little benefit to the country. On being criticised they bring up colonialism, race etc and the Phillipa’s bark to their tune.

Until this stops somehow, the cycle will continue.

By: Phillipa Lipinsky

Phillipa Lipinsky — Fri, 29 May 2009 10:56:51 +0000

My goodness, what drivel! Africa needs AID!The woman who wrote this book, Dead Aid doesn’t know aht she’s talking about. She comes from a privileged background. She doesn’t know how it feels like to be born poor and to starve most of every day. How can we expect people to start businesses when they are hungry, when they have not start-up capital, Below is a comment I made in Alex’s blogs. Hopefully it will put things in perspectie for all of you people:

When colonisers came to Africa, they extracted mineral resources and repatriated them to the West and apart from enslaving Africans, they introduced the modern economic system knowing full well that they had enriched themselves and had an upper hand in the modern era-Africa would depend on them. Africans did not see themselves as being poor when colonialists came but they were/ are proletarianized by the modern economic system and whites (and in particular those in the West) are priviledged because of this. Read Michel de Mintaigne, Rosa Luxembourg and, yes, Marx (but I must admitt the latter is poor on colonialism).

By: Dan David

Dan David — Thu, 28 May 2009 15:39:48 +0000

I read an eye-opener in The Economist a few years back that delivered a swift kick to the way international aid was mishandled following the Indian Ocean tsunami. Instead of listing what was wrong, it also outlined what should be done instead. International aid is often determined by the donor nation’s priorities, goals and expectations instead of those of the nation getting the aid. International aid agencies buy from donor nation industries, not local businesses in the recipient country. The people running and delivering the programs are flown in, not hired from the local population. You get the drift.

I saw similar stupidities, and even benefited from some as a foreign journalism trainer in South Africa before and shortly after the ’94 elections. Aid flowed freely into SA to dismantle the structures of apartheid, begin the transition to civil society. There was almost no prior work by the donor to understand the very different needs and expectations of the company, the managers, the journalists. The assumption, an arrogant one, was that we (the donor) knew best what was good for South Africa. Just as bad, there nothing resembling a decent evaluation afterward.

We did some good. But the real aim, it seems sometimes, was to foster dependency. My company wanted more business next year, and the one after. Instilling dependence and self-sufficiency was not part of the vocabulary at the time. I doubt things have changed much.

By: David Smith

David Smith — Thu, 28 May 2009 08:06:25 +0000

I stand corrected – I mistakenly robbed Gabon’s president Omar Bongo of 5 years in office. Mr. Bongo became president in 1967, and not 1972 as stated above in the body of my text. Thanks to the eagle of of Nick Kotch, pointing this out from Lusaka.

By: Lyndall Beddy

Lyndall Beddy — Thu, 28 May 2009 03:44:25 +0000

China does not “give aid” but “do business”, and the price is very hign. Infrastructure for minerals and land.

Africa should not be needing food, it has the land to feed itself AND to export, provided it farms commercially and gives up peasant farming.

But 5 countries outside of Africa, one of which is China, have acquired 1 million hectares of land in Africa.

To realise how much this is – South Africa only has 6000 hectares of arable land.

The reason the much maligned colonisers of Africa set tribal areas aside was that the chiefs would sell the land for beads.

Africa’s new chiefs are doing just that.

By: Lyndall Beddy

Lyndall Beddy — Thu, 28 May 2009 03:14:37 +0000

David

Read “The Trouble With Africa: Why Foreign Aid is not Working” by Robert Calderisi.

He worked in Africa for 40 years for the World Bank. He does not recommend withdrawing all aid, but controlling it better, and doing away with the presciption of “political interference” rule which hamstrings aid being controlled properly.

He also contrasts how the same aid deals which have not worked in Africa have worked in Asia, and why.

By: Judith Streeter

Judith Streeter — Wed, 27 May 2009 21:20:59 +0000

I welcomed Dambisa Moyos book to the debate on the Aid Industry. It has always been a source of great frustration to people like myself who have worked in Africa to see how few Africans are given a hearing. The issue of Aid is really central to the continents future. Of course the problem is that Moyo is venturing into a debate that has to date been colonized by white men. Despite the fact that she is a native Zambian woman with a Masters from Harvard and a doctorate from Oxford, she has not exactly been welcomed by the Western bien pensant. Her experience with Goldman Sachs and the World Bank counts for nothing when she is opposed by such luminaries as rock stars such as Bono and Geldof, the massed ranks of the Churches and NGOs, and emoting politicians, such as that toxic duo Brown & Blair. When she warns that such aid compounds poverty by fostering dependency, breeding corruption and stifling enterprise she should not be dismissed out of hand in the West. Clearly, in order to justify the increased spending on aid, Africans have often been portrayed as helpless. This has discouraged the very trade and investment necessary to drive development. As an old Africa hand I agree with Moyo’s assessment that Chinese direct investment and the resultant building of infrastructure such as roads and railways to extract minerals have had a mainly beneficial effect. Western politicians and NGOs are certainly in no position to

By: Alisdair Budd

Alisdair Budd — Wed, 27 May 2009 18:23:37 +0000

In Zimbabwe “Africa Day” is now viewed as a Sick Joke.

Since May 25th is when Mugabe ordered “Operation Clean out the Filth” by bulldozing 700,000 (estimated, possibly up to 1.25 MILLION Black Peasants out of their homes and businesses.

Probably for not “voting correctly” (ie for him.):

http://www.sokwanele.com/articles/fourthanniversaryofmurambatsvina_250509.html

By: Richard P

Richard P — Wed, 27 May 2009 16:30:30 +0000

What, then, David, is the point?

My comment was directed at why there is such a thing as “Africa Day”.

By all means use that as a hook on which to discuss the state of Africa, but I was not seeking to address the substance of your blog.

I was just wondering what purpose an “Africa Day” was meant to serve.

I spent the first three decades of my life in Africa and the last decade of my life in Europe, but I see no need to get wildly excited about either Africa or Europe (in fact, I see no need to get wildly excited about either my SA or UK nationalities).

For what it’s worth, my view is that financial aid is simply something which either lines to pockets of a corrupt elite or gets pissed away. Most African governments have shown themselves incapable of being able to manage wealth generated by their own countries in an accountable and responsible fashion; there is hardly any reason to expect them to treat handouts any better.

Either financial aid should completely bypass the governments in question (which they won’t allow) or it should be denied them unless very very strict conditions have been met.

Four plus decades of aid to Africa have not improved a thing other than to give rise to a culture of corruption and dependency. I think the taps should be turned off. Now.