Missions Resources - Bibliography
Dead Aid
Authors: Dambisa Moyo
ISBN: 0374139563
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Number of pages: 208
Type of cover: Hard Cover
Summary:
LISTEN TO THE REVIEW in MP3Hi, my name is Helyn Luisi-Mills. I’m the Director of the International Poverty Track at Urbana 09. I recently read Dead Aid by Dambisa Moyo. The book is subtitled Why Aid Is Not Working and How there is a Better Way.
Moyo has created a lot of controversy with the perspectives and proposal she has laid out in her book. Basically, Moyo believes that the unfettered amounts of aid that have been poured into Africa in the last 50 years has not only not helped Africa. It has made it worse. She proposes that a new option be explored. That all countries in Africa receive a five-year notice of terminating all foreign aid.
Her arguments are bolstered by what looks like strong evidence. She quotes that over a trillion dollars in the last few decades has created an African culture of dependence and unmitigated corruption.
When you look at Africa, on the face of it, it seems to collaborate her disdain of how aid works (or doesn’t). Governments and leaders have siphoned huge amounts of money and there are not very many roads leading to anywhere in Africa. How can you send aid to where it cannot go without roads. The aid that is supposed to be used to build the very infrastructure needed to deliver aid is clearly not effective.
Moyo spends most of her time talking about government aid, and the world bank. She proposes love that is beyond tough. Her tough love is more of the “this-is-going-to-hurt-you-more-than-it’s-going-to-hurt-me” variety.
Dead Aid has brought a lot of controversy to the conversation of aid. While many in the west laud her for speaking from the African voice, Africans themselves don’t seem to want to embrace her. While she proposes opening emerging markets similar to India and China, there is little mention of the millions who would die and suffer at the hand of capitalism, which at it’s core, is not considerate of the poor. And she may be assuming too much that a government (many of which in Africa already don’t care for its people) would have changes of heart and begin to care for them if the aid was suddenly not there.
I think that Dead Aid is worth reading. It is important to understand where people are coming from, and to understand the complexities of what it means to follow Jesus’ calling to love and serve the poor. What I think is missing in this book is compassion. As others have pointed out, Moyo writes with an African voice about the poor, but she is not herself poor. I also don’t see that she has written this book with the poor in mind. Although there is a Kiva microloans shout out, there is a seemingly cold attitude taken towards the poor in a theoretical expanding of a market from domestic and international investors. The poor do not need our hand-me-downs or our pity. The poor are due dignity and compassion.
I encourage you to read Dead Aid. I also encourage you to read other books. You can check out the Urbana 09 International Poverty Track Facebook Group for suggestions. But most of all, I encourage you to go and see. Not just for a couple of days, or an extended vacation, but really plant yourself in the communities that Moyo is talking about. Only from there can we be in conversation and relationship with the poor and ask them what to do about aid.
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