Dead Aid

Why Aid Is Not Working and How There Is a Better Way for Africa

By: Dambisa Moyo, Niall Ferguson - foreword

Narrated by: Mike Chamberlain

A national best-seller, Dead Aid unflinchingly confronts one of the greatest myths of our time: that billions of dollars in aid sent from wealthy countries to developing African nations has helped to reduce poverty and increase growth. In fact, poverty levels continue to escalate and growth rates have steadily declined - and millions continue to suffer.

Debunking the current model of international aid promoted by both Hollywood celebrities and policy makers, Dambisa Moyo offers a bold new road map for financing the development of the world's poorest countries.

Much debated in the US and the UK on publication, Dead Aid is an unsettling yet optimistic work, a powerful challenge to the assumptions and arguments that support a profoundly misguided development policy in Africa. And it is a clarion call to a new, more hopeful vision of how to address the desperate poverty that plagues millions.

©2009 Dambisa Moyo (P)2019 Tantor

The Wasted Decades of Africa

I have finally read this book. It was written right before many African countries decided to go to the market for Eurobonds, multilateral loans, and other many commerical loans. And what has been the result? Almost all the countries that did so are on their knees with deep debt and risk of defaulting. IMF is now back and giving us (I'm in Kenya) a whole load of structural adjustment programmes - again.

The author of this book gave us the blueprint and we wasted a decade. No, we didn't just waste one decade, we wasted the next few because of all the loans we have to repay. The author's message was excellent and killing aid while fostering commerical loans is the way to go. However, we have to fix our political side. The last decade has been wasted by our leaders because it was the age of easy money. They were like a kid in a candy store and got everything possible for themselves without caring about the future. Politics and economy go hand in hand.

for all Africans to learn

All African Diaspora should read the book version or listen to this Audiobook. it is worth it.

Eye opening

Moyo's book is excellent. The combination of her life experience growing up in Africa combined with her PhD in economics from Harvard gives her the insight to both understand the conditions on the ground in the area she's describing, and the knowledge of the mechanics and potential solutions for how aid might be better distributed, and the reasons for the faulty foundations of the money's origins and distribution. Many of the economic arguments were complex and went over my head, but Moyo still makes an extremely persuasive case which will likely break the reader's emotional stereotypes that giving money to impoverished countries is the best way to help them. An extremely important book that should be much more widely read and discussed.

Interesting Listen

I found this book very interesting and it provoked me to critical thought many times. Moyo makes many strong arguments for radically changing the way we support many African nations. A few of her arguments did not convince me, but whether that is because they were lacking in evidence or that they simply went over my head is up for debate. I am certainly not an expert in aid, humanitarian action, or even economics but I feel that I am significantly more informed on the matter having listened to this book.

eye opening to say the least.

There are in this book many things to ponder as an american policy writer. Especially things concidering tax money being used for benefit not social moral grandstanding. I want to see Africa raised out of poverty, capitalism is the only thing to work everywhere else. the question as always is how wrong am I.

Cody Rasmussen