Dambisa Moyo’s 2009 book Dead Aid sought to revive the neoliberal prescriptions for Africa’s development that were promoted by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund during the 1980s and 1990s. This article argues that implementing such prescriptions would repeat the catastrophic errors of Africa’s two ‘lost decades’ and that the real alternative to aid dependency lies not in the free market but in development that is genuinely accountable to local communities.
Dambisa Moyo, Dead Aid: Why aid is not working and how there is another way for Africa( London, Penguin, 2009).
2.
It was eventually published as a Pelican paperback: Teresa Hayter, Aid as Imperialism (Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1971). President J. F. Kennedy was equally candid over the purpose of US aid, describing it as ‘a method by which the United States maintains a position of influence and control around the world and sustains a good many countries which would definitely collapse or pass into the Communist bloc’. See also Graham Hancock, Lords of Poverty: the freewheeling lifestyles, power, prestige and corruption of the multibillion dollar aid business (London, Mandarin Books, 1991).
3.
Yash Tandon, Ending Aid Dependence (Cape Town, Dakar and Nairobi, Fahamu Books, 2008); Jonathan Glennie, The Trouble With Aid: why less could mean more for Africa (London, Zed Books, 2008).
4.
Saprin, Structural Adjustment: the policy roots of economic crisis, poverty and inequality (London , Zed Books, 2004); Arun Kundnani, The End of Tolerance: racism in 21st century Britain ( London, Pluto Press, 2007); Tandon, Ending Aid Dependence, op. cit.
5.
IMF Independent Evaluation Office, Structural Conditionality in IMF-Supported Programs (Washington, DC, International Monetary Fund, 2008); Nuria Molina and Javier Pereira, Critical Conditions: the IMF maintains its grip on low-income countries (Brussels, Eurodad, 2008); Untying the Knots: how the World Bank is failing to deliver real change on conditionality (Brussels, Eurodad, 2007).
6.
Graham Hobbs and David Tucker, Trading Away Our Jobs: how free trade threatens employment around the world (London, War on Want, 2009).
7.
John Hilary, ‘Trade liberalization, poverty and the WTO: assessing the realities’ , in Homi Katrak and Roger Strange, eds, The WTO and Developing Countries (London, Palgrave Macmillan , 2004), pp. 38-62.
8.
IMF Independent Evaluation Office, IMF Involvement in International Trade Policy Issues (Washington, DC, International Monetary Fund, 2009); IMF Involvement in Trade Policy Issues in Low-Income Countries: seven case studies (Washington, DC, International Monetary Fund, 2009), section E.
9.
Moyo, Dead Aid, op. cit., p. 39.
10.
Ha-Joon Chang, Kicking Away the Ladder: development strategy in historical perspective (London, Anthem Press, 2002).
11.
David Woodward , The Next Crisis? Direct and equity investment in developing countries (London, Zed Books, 2001); Tandon, op. cit.
12.
Paul Collier , The Bottom Billion: why the poorest countries are failing and what can be done about it (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2008).
13.
See also Robert Calderisi, The Trouble With Africa: why foreign aid isn’t working (London, Yale University Press, 2006).
14.
Unctad, The State and Development Governance: the least developed countries report 2009( Geneva and New York, UNCTAD , 2009).
15.
David Harvey , The New Imperialism(Oxford , Oxford University Press, 2003).
