Foreign aid to Africa has turned the continent into a ‘giant welfare state’ and is one of the direct causes for the rise in poverty rates from 11% to 66% in recent times.
This is according to African author and economist Dambisa Moyo as she adds her voice to the growing group of learned economists calling for an end to foreign aid to Africa.
An interview with Moyo, for the magazine Guernica, offers a new way to look at foreign aid and its impact on the receiving country and peoples.
I think the whole aid model is couched in pity. I don’t want to cast aspersions as to where that pity comes from. But I do think it’s based on pity because based on logic and evidence, it is very clear that aid does not work. And yet if you speak to some of the biggest supporters of aid, whether they are academics or policy makers or celebrities, their whole rationale for giving more aid to Africa is not couched in logic or evidence; it’s based largely on emotion and pity.
Comments
2 responses to “Ending Foreign Aid to Africa”
Not to be picky, but isn’t Africa a continent, not a country? This just jumped out at me.
It’s funny how this post connects with the above one about the watch and sentimentality. The underlying assumption is that emotion is somehow fraudulent or invalid. If we acted purely on logic, perhaps the best solution for African states is to move everyone into giant cities –but clearly, this would be absurd.
Giving aid is probably the easiest solution, where all the more effectual ones are complicated and/or difficult.
(love your blog!)
Duly corrected to ‘continent’. Thanks for pointing that out.
I think the idea that “emotion is somehow fraudulent or invalid” is exactly what a lot of rationality and (behavioural) economics research is concluding lately and it is exactly this that I find fascinating.
Maybe the most important question ‘How can we tell when to trust our emotions?’
It appears that aid and charity may be two places where we shouldn’t.
Thanks for the comment, Matt.