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Dead Aid [Paperback]

Dambisa Moyo
3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)

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Book Description

Mar 15 2010 1553655427 978-1553655428 1 Reprint

The provocative New York Times and Globe and Mail bestseller offers a controversial road map to address the desperate poverty in Africa.

The subject of a media blitz, Dead Aid continues to generate heated debate in the aid community. Bono's organization, one, organized a campaign against the author, Dambisa Moyo, who was chosen by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential people of 2009. In the past 50 years, more than $1 trillion in aid has gone to Africa. In this "incendiary new book" (Daily Mail), Moyo offers a bold new road map for financing development of the world's poorest countries that guarantees economic growth and a significant decline in poverty-without reliance on foreign aid. Dead Aid is an unsettling yet optimistic work, a powerful challenge to the assumptions and arguments that support a profoundly misguided postwar development policy in Africa.


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Review

"Moyo presents a refreshing view." (Lisa Miller Newsweek 20090321)

"Moyo has the world's ear, and for good reason. When you think of all the talking heads you see on news programs, how many of them are women from the nations and situations being discussed?" (Flare Magazine 20090601)

"A tightly argued brief...Vivid." (Matthew Rees The Wall Street Journal 20090321)

"Moyo is right to raise her voice, and she should be heard if African nations and other poor countries are to move in the right direction." (Jagdish Bhagwati Foreign Affairs 20100101)

"Dead Aid is an important book...at the very least, [it] provides a first step towards changing how America, and the world, thinks about how to help Africa." (Heather Wilhelm Real Clear World 20090413)

"Dead Aid is a wonderfully liberating book." (Doug Bandow The Washington Times 20090407)

"It all provokes a question: Why is it that in certain Canadian circles, the ideas of Moyo, Collier and Easterly aren't part of the national conversation about foreign aid? We seem to prefer looking through rose-tinted glasses, evaluating the worth of foreign aid not on what's being achieved but on how much is being dispensed." (National Post 20110516)

"The wisdom contained here -- if absorbed by African and global policymakers -- will turn this chronically depressed continent into an inspiring miracle of dazzling economic growth." (Steve Forbes, President and Chief Executive Officer of Forbes and Editor-in-Chief of Forbes ma 20090301)

"Dambisa Moyo is to aid what Ayaan Hirsi Ali is to Islam. Here is an African woman, articulate, smart, glamorous, delivering a message of brazen political incorrectness: cut aid to Africa. Aid, she argues, has not merely failed to work; it has compounded Africa's problems. Moyo cannot be dismissed as a crank...She catalogues evidence, both statistical and anecdotal...The core of her argument is that there is a better alternative [and it deserves] to be taken seriously." (Paul Collier The Independent 20090130)

"Dead Aid calls for a new way of thinking...This book offers a fresh insight into the plight of poverty and a vision for developmental change -- the kind of change that could help millions." (Curt Devine Relevant 20090408)

"A radical, counterintuitive solution to the continent's economic problems...[Moyo] is unequivocal, not to mention convincing." (Jason Zasky Failure Magazine 20090409)

"The evidence assessing the impact of aid on economic growth (or the lack thereof) is comprehensive and convincing." (Apoorva Shah, Hoover Institution, Stanford University 20090410)

"Moyo's indictment of the past 50 years of aid-giving is compelling...[She] has written a well-informed book, and her passionate commitment to improving Africa's fortunes drips from every page." (Jonathan Wright Geographical 20090411)

"Dambisa Moyo makes a compelling case for a new approach in Africa. Her message is that Africa's time is now. It is time for Africans to assume full control over their economic and political destiny. Africans should grasp the many means and opportunities available to them for improving the quality of life. Dambisa is hard -- perhaps too hard -- on the role of aid. But her central point is indisputable. The determination of Africans, and genuine partnership between Africa and the rest of the world, is the basis for growth and development." (Kofi Annan, former Secretary-General of the United Nations 20090302)

"An incendiary new book...Here is a refreshing voice...What makes Dead Aid so powerful is that it's a double-barrelled shotgun of a book. With the first barrel, Moyo demolishes all the most cherished myths about aid being a good thing. But with the second, crucially, she goes on to explain what the West could be doing instead." (Christopher Hart The Daily Mail 20090326)

About the Author

Born and raised in Zambia, Dambisa Moyo received a Ph.D. in economics from Oxford University and a master's degree from Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government. A former consultant for the World Bank and an investment banker specializing in emerging markets at Goldman Sachs, she is the author of the New York Times bestseller Dead Aid.


Customer Reviews

Most helpful customer reviews
22 of 25 people found the following review helpful
3.0 out of 5 stars Big on ideas, short on analysis July 21 2009
By J. Tobin Garrett TOP 500 REVIEWER
Format:Hardcover
After reading Jeffrey Sach's book The End of Poverty (his main argument calling for more aid to Africa), I felt that I should read a book arguing for the opposite, so I picked up Dead Aid.

The central argument is that aid is bad for Africa, and in fact, is the reason that Africa is caught in a poverty trap. It's an interesting argument, and one that I was ready to be convinced of, but I felt that Moyo didn't provide enough analysis and evidence for her claims. Too many times I found myself asking the questions: how? and why? While I am inclined to agree with her central claim, her argument in the specifics was too simplistic and she often presented the link between aid and Africa's plight as causal, when really it seem corollary.

The book is too short and the analysis too brief to hold up to the mighty claim that she proposes. Clocking in at only 153 pages, the book dedicates 19 pages to a brief history of aid (which is really well done), another 19 pages to show that aid isn't working, and 21 pages to prove that aid actually kills growth. While I'm not a fan of bloated writing for no reason, Moyo needed more evidence, more explanation to back up her arguments.

Even though I found the beginning part of the book frustrating at times, I was looking forward to her ideas on how to develop Africa without the help of aid (which the next 80 pages or so are dedicated towards). She has some interesting ideas around capital markets, foreign direct investment, and micro-lending, but again I found her arguments to be overly simplistic and too brief to be convincing. She discusses how trade should be a big factor in the growth of Africa, something that's obviously true. Then she documents how subsidies in Western nations effectively push out African products by flooding the market with cheap, subsidized goods. But then she doesn't really propose how to solve this issue of unfair trade.

In the end, I was convinced that Africa needed to be weaned off aid, but remained unconvinced that it was as simple as Moyo claimed and that the alternatives were as easy to implement as she laid out.
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18 of 23 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars Read this book before you send your money May 5 2009
By I. Dobson TOP 500 REVIEWER
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
With all the hype about deadbeat western governments not living up to their committment to African aid, this book stops the shame-game dead in its tracks. Written by someone who has grown up and lived in Africa, not just visted in a chartered jet, this book looks at the way so much of our foreign aid is at best misdirected and at worst completely squandered. The author argues that simply propping up hand-out programs and feeding corrupt regimes does little to improve the long term survival of this highly dysfunctional continent. Instead she offers a more logical structured approach to fixing the problem through empowerment, and goes on to offer hope in what so many see as a hopeless situation. The money still needs to be forthcoming, just not in the way it is being currently applied. This book tells us how to do it right.
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4 of 5 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars Give the people of Africa what they really need Sep 26 2010
By Andy
Format:Paperback
This book offered an easy to read history and viable solutions to helping Africa. Dead Aid will change the way that you think of Africa. Dead Aid wasn't full of confusing economic theories or in-depth history but clear, concise points. The book is a quick read but very helpful in understanding Africa and its people. Dead Aid should be recommended reading for politicians, business people, and aid groups.
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