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Buy the Book
Overcoming Aid
Liberal sentimentality isn’t putting food on Africans’ tables.
Dead Aid: Why Aid Is
Not Working and How There Is a Better Way for
Africa
By Dambisa Moyo
(Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, 208 pages, $24)
The Life You Can Save:
Acting Now to End World Poverty
By Peter Singer
(Random House, 224 pages, $22)
It is possible to reduce, in good faith, Peter Singer’s argument for more charitable foreign aid in his The Life You Can Save to the following syllogism:
1. If you saw someone in immediate danger, you would unquestionably be obliged to rescue that person even at some personal cost. For instance, you would save a drowning person even if you had to ruin your expensive clothes in the swim.
2. Even if you don’t realize it, there are desperately poor people in Africa and elsewhere who are in mortal danger comparable to drowning, and they could be rescued if you offered a little aid.
Conclusion: You have an unquestionable obligation to incur the personal cost of aiding the impoverished.
Singer makes the thesis of his book this simplistic on purpose. He does so because he wants to stress the moral imperative of foreign aid without appealing to his own notoriously unorthodox ethical system.
Singer, a Princeton ethicist, is famous for his radical utilitarianism and system of ethics based on maximizing the preference-satisfaction of all who stand to be affected by a given decision. He is controversial for some of the logical consequences of this philosophy. For example, his ethics suggest that some animals deserve the same rights as the mentally handicapped (since they do not have fully developed preferences to satisfy).
His ethics system compels Singer to try to remedy the serious problems poor people face in satisfying their preferences. But obviously most people have a vastly different moral understanding from his, so he tries to couch his argument in the most innocuous terms possible, so as not to disclose his own worldview.
Does he succeed? Singer’s arguments are undermined because most readers will not share his uncritical assumption that aid organizations like Oxfam are the most effective means of helping the poor. The strongest claim he is able to make is that people in wealthy nations should donate to aid organizations on a sliding scale based on income. This goal is modest for the sake of attracting more donors, but as a result it might leave potential donors underwhelmed and unmotivated.
DAMBISA MOYO, HOWEVER, attempts what she terms a “clarion call.” Her method for helping Africa’s poor is nothing if not ambitious: to cut off all government aid to Africa within five years.
By Moyo’s own admission, the arguments against aid were well known before Dead Aid. The criticisms of the current aid model she presents are cribbed out of the work of pro-market economists like William Easterly and Peter Bauer before him, who for years have argued that aid policies hurt the very people they were supposed to help. Moyo claims that it is no accident that aid-dependent African countries have shown negative growth since the foreign aid taps opened.
Aid has the same effect on small countries as the discovery of a valuable natural resource. This “Dutch Disease” creates illusory gains for a country without improving its underlying development, while also raising the prices of its exports. Most aid goes directly into the pockets of dictators, and finances corruption. Furthermore, aid crowds out private investment and reduces the drive to innovate. The greatest shame, Moyo argues, is that it would be easy to implement effective pro-market measures, like micro-finance, foreign direct investment, trade, and floating bonds. All these measures would foster rapid growth and responsibility without the negative effects of aid.
These ideas are not new or revolutionary, but the author is. As an Oxford-trained economist and banking veteran, Moyo appreciates markets and catches the pitfalls of aid that Singer blithely ignores. As a native Zambian, she can empathize with poor Africans and understand the obstacles they face in a way that no white Western man can, Peter Singer very much included.
For Moyo, whose parents fortuitously escaped crushing poverty where others did not, the Africans living in desperate poverty are not an abstraction. Many sub-Saharan African women live in dire circumstances, but proponents of microcredit are finding that even very small loans can drastically improve their situations. Moyo must realize that she could easily have been among those desperate for a micro-loan. Moyo has skin in the game, a reality that lends pragmatism to her approach and enables her to think critically about the current aid schemes.
About the Author
Joseph Lawler, former managing editor of The American Spectator, is editor of Real Clear Policy. Follow him on twitter: @josephlawler.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (104) | Leave a comment
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Brooksanne| 3.16.09 @ 11:35AM
I wonder when Westerners will realize that our prosperity rests on our forebears' self-reliance and willingness to face difficulties; and that others need various kinds of help (other than a cash gift) before they can get to that point.
dcd| 3.16.09 @ 12:36PM
Moyo criticizes aid, in part, because an exploitable source of cash and power leads to corruption (someone will be smart enough to get their hands on the cash) and corruption tends to spread.
It would therefore make sense to not only cut off aid but also trad. Western demand for diamonds, gold, tantalum and oil also inable smaal groups to acquire easy money by corruption. Without the access to forign cash the internal markets and structures would be forced to develop to a point where they could with stand corrupting influence of forign cash.
*| 3.16.09 @ 2:59PM
Oxfam doesn't give money to goverments, Peter Singer is not against microlending...
John Karanja | 3.17.09 @ 5:38AM
I am about a third of the way of reading Dambisa's book and i can already tell you she has contextualized African Aid vis a vis European Aid, given the Marshall Aid plan was given to Europe to reconstruct was was destroyed as compared to African Aid which was given for political reasons such as the cold war alignment.
D&L| 3.17.09 @ 9:02AM
I have great respect for Peter Singer, his mature utilitarianism and his vast experience in applying philosophical ethical theories to day-to-day problems of people. It would be wrong to reduce Singer's argument for giving aid to utilitarianism alone. What he stresses in his book is that it is just human that when you see another suffering, you feel like helping - nothing about how that suffering person will actually use that help. It is wrong to contrast Dambisa Moyo's views that aid does not work to the need to help those in need according to Singer. Such analysis lack focus on clearly two crucial sides of the debate on aid when millions of Africans still want to move out of their own poverty even if it means pulling themselves up with their bootstraps.
Mike McCormick| 3.17.09 @ 4:43PM
"Poverty is the worst form of violence" Gandhi-It is not suprising that most of the continent of Africa is in turmoil.I remember while living in Chad ,N'garta Tombabaye who was president at the time stating" I can no longer accept the crumbs from the rich mans' table "He told the American military (C-130 cargo planes )were there to help with the Sahelian drought to leave .He was unhappy with Henry Kamm's NYT article concerning corruption in Chad.To be truthful it's hard to do business with so many failed states when AID corruption rules the day.Africa needs to look at itself and realize why a lot of the suffering of its empoverished people continues .Sure mercenaries ,misfits ,missionaries and without doubt the colonizers are in the mix but let's face it big business and multi-nationals still exploit the hell out African countries with the complicity of their leadership (see) Ronald Reagan with his arm around Mouboutu in Washington.A picture is indeed worth a thousand words.
Pingback| 3.29.09 @ 9:45PM
People and Development | Commentary on Dambisa Moyo’s book ‘Dead Aid’ links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
Rasna Warah| 5.30.09 @ 11:11AM
If you want to see how aid really works (or rather doesn't work) on the ground, I suggest you read Missionaries, Mercenaries and Misfits (AuthorHouse 2008). Moyo provides the analysis, this anthology provides the evidence.
Margaret | 8.31.09 @ 1:57AM
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Margaret | 8.31.09 @ 1:57AM
I recently came across your blog and have been reading along. I thought I would leave my first comment. I don't know what to say except that I have enjoyed reading. Nice blog. I will keep visiting this blog very often.
Margaret
http://grantfoundation.net
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Dambisa Moyo Wikipedia entry « Kingmix’s Blog links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
d3sign3rf3n1x| 10.4.09 @ 8:24PM
It is hard to say that aid is not the best solution, it is a quick fix...with I guess long-term negative consequences as pointed out in previous comments.
We need to make third world countries independent and more reliable, but it is very difficult.
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Tariku| 12.18.10 @ 1:43PM
Aid produces much more than just corruption. It massively distorts priorities, it misallocates labour towards politically correct drivel, and it makes young Africans study and strive to please donors rather than consumers.
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We must do something about it that fresh water is available all over the world and free for everyone.
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Water is a must have for every human.
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Michael Thode | 8.5.11 @ 10:11AM
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