Dambisa Moyo, speaking at the FCCC Event in Beijing, November 1, 2010.
Dambisa Moyo is an international economist from Zambia who specializes in macroeconomics and global affairs. A former consultant for the World Bank, Moyo worked for Goldman Sachs in London for nearly a decade before authoring the controversial — but Oprah-endorsed — bestseller, Dead Aid: Why Aid is Not Working and How there is a Better Way for Africa. Moyo holds an archipelago of degrees from world-renowned institutions: a Ph.D. in Economics from Oxford, an M.A. from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, an MBA from American University in D.C., and a B.S. in Chemistry from her native Zambia.
Dead Aid incriminates international aid as having made the largest contribution to the disfunction of the continent’s economy by increasing government corruption. Her solution? Unequivocal. Completely phase out reliance on aid — a goal we all have in common, she states — look to the international bond markets to finance public sector investments, to foreign direct investment to finance private sector growth, and to micro-financing for local development.
She recently addressed a group of Beijing-based journalists. Below are a few highlights.
Moyo’s most emphatic point was about the exacerbated effect aid has had on the numerous African kleptocracies:
“Aid has allowed governments to abdicate their responsibilities of providing public goods for their people. It severs a fundamental link between a ruling government and its people. If the government does not rely on it’s people, then the people also do not rely on their government, and instead they rely on the international community who, for their own motivations, continues to give aid to Africa even though there has been a lack of delivery in the reduction of poverty and any amount of economic growth over the last few decades. The whole continent is hooked on a drug that is unsustainable.”
“There is a desperate need for African governments to be more involved — this needs to take a significant priority — and they moreover need to be the leaders in delivering economic growth. It’s not good enough for people [foreigners] to be concerned with Africa, if the leaders themselves are not concerned with Africa. There is no country on earth that has achieved long term growth and reduced poverty by relying on aid to the extent that African countries rely on aid today. We’re not children; we need to be treated as the adults that we are.”
On China’s presence in Africa, “The Chinese have done more for Africa’s infrastructure and economic growth in the last five years than America has done in the last 50. One of the greatest things they have to offer, at least on the surface, is that they are negotiating business on equal footing; the positive effect this has on governments that are often treated with condescension cannot be underestimated.”
Moyo at one point during the talk referenced the infamous 2007 Pew Global Attitudes Survey that asked Africans in ten countries to compare the influences of China and the U.S. in their own countries. In nine of the ten countries, by margins that ranged from 60-91%, African respondents said Chinese influence was good. “It suggests to me that people feel this new model seems to be working, where Africans are treated as equal partners.”
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