Book Review Dead Aid Dambisa Moyo

Basically, Dambisa Moyo describes the state of post-war economic development in Africa and boldly opposes one of the highest known myths; that over a trillion dollars that have been sent to African in the form of aid has reduced poverty and increase economic development in the continent. According to the book, Dead Aid, poverty levels have significantly shot as a result of foreign aid in Africa and development growth rates have considerably declined as millions continue to suffer under the support. In the book, Dead Aid, the author, Dambisa Moyo provocatively draws a sharp contrast between African countries that have agreed to the foreign aid and witnessed poverty increase and those that have rejected the international assistance and realized a significant economic development; by illuminating the way overreliance on the foreign aid had trapped many economically developing nations in a deliberately cruel and violent circle of corruption, market distortion, aid dependence and more poverty, that has left them with nothing more but the quest for more aid.

Backing her arguments and illustrations on the current model of international assistance, Dambisa Moyo outlines a new bold roadway maps a successful development plan for financing developing African countries in a way that guarantees economic development growth and a significant decline in poverty, without over-reliance on aid-related assistance. The book Dead Aid, written by Dambisa Moyo is quite unsettling yet optimistic with an incredibly powerful call of contrast to the arguments and assumptions that propose and support a misguided development policy in the African nations. The result is unlevelled, breathless sweep through the history of aid alongside the current policy options for Africa, covered in odd statistics. By mainly drawing from the book Dead Aid written by Dambisa Moyo towards the end of chapter three and the entire chapter four, I offer a few criticisms about the concept of slowed development and increased poverty as illustrated by Moyo.

The first criticism contradicts the statement, aid does not bring about economic growth. According to the book written by Dambisa Moyo, the economic development in Africa is based on the foreign aid sent, whereby the author focuses her arguments on overdependence on foreign assistance and increased poverty. At the very end of chapter three in the book, Dead Aid, Moyo starts to reveal her significant criticisms of aid. The long-term effect of the ‘aid injection’ has been to decimate the local economy and make the local population dependent on foreign aid from abroad” (Sumner & Mallet, 2012). Backing her arguments with some statistics, the author goes ahead to suggest that even the hastiest look at the statistical data reveals that as African aid has increased over time, economic development in the continent has decreased significantly with a higher incidence of poverty.

Moyo further argues that the direct impacts of aid-driven investments and interventions in Africa have been a drastic descent into poverty. Moreover, she cites the country of Zambia as an example and the inevitable fact that when foreign aids were at the highest between 1970 – 1998, poverty in the continent of African rose to sixty-six percent. What the major problem with the illustrations Dambisa Moyo presents in her book is that she fails to provide sufficient evidence to support her enormous proposal. One of the worst-case scenarios is in the African country of Uganda in the 1990s. It was estimated that only twenty percent of the nation’s government expenditure on education made it to local schools. According to the author of the book, Dead Aid, Dambisa Moyo foreign aid is not only one of the causes of corruption but also one of the greatest aiders for bribery.

Moyo supports her argument by stating that with the help of foreign aid, corruption fosters corruption, whereby nations quickly descend into numerous cycles for assistance. Nevertheless, the author Dambisa Moyo drifts from the main idea and starts to imply casualties by stating that economic and development growth cannot occur in an environment where corruption is at peak, citing un-evidenced reasons (Easterly, 2009). The author further states that aid has weakened relationships by siphoning off scarce abilities from job positions and encouraging rent-seeking behaviour as well as eliminating essential pressures needed for efficient policies that govern social capital. However, from the points mentioned above that are based on the author’s book, it is worth noting that the presented criticisms are merely fusions of the previous two criticism of foreign aid, which asserts that foreign assistance hinders economic development and growth as well as promotes corruption.

Furthermore, Dambisa Moyo does not provide satisfactory evidences for the claims that aid has broken social capital in Africa. The profound criticisms I have of the author Dambisa Moyo in her book, Dead Aid is that she uses statistical data that portray a mutual relationship between a higher level of aid receivers and weak economic development growth; she then attempts to indicate the truth of casualties by using highly selective, emotive, hypothetical and anecdotal evidence to support her statements. I for one say “imply causality” based on the fact that she never uses the word ‘cause’ but leaves the readers with the impression that that is what she is suggesting. files. wordpress. com/2011/07/moyoreviewforlrbjune2009neverpublished. pdf, checked on, 8(23), p. Prazeres, T.