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I have just
plodded through Dead Aid, written by Zambian economist Dambisa Moyo
(Farrah, Strauss & Giroux). The book is, on the surface, bold and
audacious. In the past 50 years, over US$1 trillion in development
related aid has been funnelled to Africa from the rich countries of the
West. Moyo argues that the aid should be stopped, because Africa has
been further impoverished precisely because of her reliance on these
funds. Wow, this coming from an African, I eagerly looked forward to
reading the book. I was disappointed.

It is a pretty
book bearing empty promises of courageous conversations. Think of being
offered a placebo pill to cure your malaria. The pill is pretty but
your malaria rages on. Moyo is not a good writer and it shows
painfully. If she is a great thinker, it is not evident in this
should-have-been-an-essay production. I can understand why this book
was published. Moyo’s thesis taunts and torments liberal orthodoxy and
she resonates with the frustrations of weary donor-nations. This
messenger, at first glance, is a gift from God. Black, African,
articulate (oh, I hate that patronising word as it oozes out of
swooning Western reviewers, “Ah, look! A black woman! She is from
Zambia, you know, articulate, went to Harvard, worked for Goldman
Sachs, the World Bank, swoon, prattle, swoon!”).

Moyo does have
impressive credentials, but I have news for the West; there is more
where she came from, your prejudices are looking the wrong way. A
writer, however, she is not. What she is, is a trained economist used
to churning out carefully ironed wooden prose in those World Bank
proposals that go to Africa and other unfortunate places to die, places
like her Zambia. The research is awful and the prescriptions are
alarming tracts straight out of a neo-conservative economics textbook.
The Biafran war did not happen in 1971, as she breezily shares (p26).
Biafra officially ended in January 1970. She wants it to happen in 1971
because she conflates it with George Harrison the Beatle’s benefit for
Bangladesh that happened in August 1971! Go figure. And to dismiss the
Congo’s Patrice Lumumba as “a communist” is silly and reveals the
quality of her knowledge of African issues. Her core recommendation is
that African nations should access private capital (aka loans) in the
open markets rather than relying on the largesse of Western
governments. She obviously did not see the financial meltdown coming.
Her other recommendation that aid to Africa be ended within a five-year
period is unrealistic and troubling.

I do share her
misgivings, 100 per cent about what has happened to the money that has
been given to Africa as AID. It is not chump change. Aid-giving is a
multibillion industry that benefits mostly the NGOs and their assorted
pimps riding around Africa’s desolate lands in their convoy of SUVs.
There is little or no accountability for these funds. I am not an
economist but the economic theories she propounds are too heavily
aligned with the discredited world view of Ronald Reagan’s tenure in
the White House. Those theories are two decades old and quite frankly
have proven inadequate in today’s world of porous physical boundaries.
It is too land-based to deal robustly with today’s world. All this is a
shame because Moyo has several promising premises to work on. She
simply was not equipped to flesh out her thoughts in a muscular manner.

She is also right
when she says democracy has impoverished Africa. She says that Africa
should look to China for help. I actually believe that the empowerment
of the truly dispossessed lies outside Africa. It is sad and I don’t
know why, but our cognitive elite of leaders have demonstrated that
they are incapable of being altruistic when it comes to doing what must
be done for Africa. They are apparently wired to be self-serving
thieves.

It is easy to agree with Moyo; most of the aid to Africa and
so-called third world nations has been wasted. Moyo, however, gets the
issues all confused. Africa needs help, lots of it, and it is in the
world’s interest to give help. Why does Africa resist all attempts to
get her out of poverty? My parents simply want some relief from black
on black abuse. My father Papalolo points out at every opportunity that
he was happier under colonialism. Now, that really hurts. He has never
quite understood the difference between Sani Abacha and Obasanjo, same
difference. My mother waves her cell phone at me and predicts that the
white man will soon discover a wireless marvel that will supply her
light and water. She already uses her cell phone as a flash light when
the light goes out. No need for PHCN (Power Holding Company of
Nigeria). As far as my mother is concerned, each Nigerian regime should
be renamed PHCN — problem has changed name again. My parents await
external intervention to free them from the multiple tyrannies
unleashed on them by the mis-rulers of Nigeria. That relief is not
going to come out of Moyo’s book.