Posts Tagged “aid”

Dead Aid

0Ross • 8th Nov 2009 • Learning, Thinking • africa, aid, Dambisa Moyo, development, economics, international development, William Easterly

I have just finished this book, by Dambisa Moyo. It’s a very simple argument. So simple that the preface by Niall Ferguson means you can skip the majority of the book. After an hour, you’ll have the idea. As Niall points out, it’s slightly annoying that these arguments are taken more seriously when they come from Dambisa, an intelligent, attractive Ghanaian, rather than from older, whiter (but equally intelligent) critics of aid, such as Bill Easterly. But that’s not to the discredit of Ms Moyo or the arguments. Somebody needs to get the fact that aid is not the answer on the radar. Moyo does a good job as the ‘anti-Bono’.

The Vanity Fair analysis

0Ross • 29th Sep 2009 • Learning • africa, aid, development, international development

In what might qualify as a surrealistic moment, the Administrator of USAID asked a staffer to summarize the policy conclusions of the Vanity Fair analysis for U.S. foreign aid.

That’s from William Easterly’s working paper “Can the West save Africa?” A footnote to the passage reads:

I verified this by getting an actual copy of the memo