My experiences as a Peace Corps Volunteer (1979-1983) in Kenya completely contradicts Moyo in her assessment of the impact of aid.

I’ve not heard her enough to know how she visualizes the task of economic empowerment. How to counter the dependency created by market integration when a group does not have the political power to defend their economic interest. I hope she crafts another book that provides us with a view into her thinking on this matter.

I think you could make your arguments sans the need to attack the author on trivial or personal grounds. Another way of looking at her history of privliage is to note that she is engaged in seeking a better way of empowerment for Africa. With her access to power, she could be rewareded a great deal more by being a compliant agent of colonical dominiation then the media darling of right wing think tanks. If that is indeed what she is.

I find the logic of your entry to be a little hard to follow. On the one hand, it appears that your biggest problem with her is a background of privlidge. But, your perscription of utizling forign aid as a means of assuring Western controll of mineral wealth by bribing corrupt governments appears to be confused.

Your argurments about grass-roots empowerment of NGO entities as a viable model is again confused. What I think Ms. Moyo is arguing is that the aid retards that very process. AID funding is diverted from these types of efforts. AID funding creates competing power structures in these sectors.

Furthermore, I do not understand how you make the leap to isolationsim from denoucing the aid industry. I’ve read that trade policies of the global north have a far greater negative economic impact then the total AID given. She is talking about empowered particpation rather then dependent servitude.

Have you read any of the text that you share as being right wing white male books? How in the world is Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed cited as a right wing text.

Rather then talking in an echo chamber of whites, I hear Maggie Walk, W.E.B. Du Bois, Booker T Washington, Marcus Garvey, George Washington Carver and even Malcom X in her discourse.

I am not sure whether you knowledge of Africa is hard earned but I would guess that it probaly isn’t. As an African woman born without privilege and certainly not educated to the level that Dambisa is I see and subscribe to her argument about AID. In many ways you would have to be African to appreciate some of her arguments.

I grew up in Uganda and lived there for 25 years but was not aware that the government of the time was in receipt of AID, mainly because this AID never reached my village and had no real impact on my day to day life or anyone that I knew for that matter.

Yes Uganda is a different country today and a lot has been acheived in terms of education programmes, the infrastructure has generally improved. I would however argue that most of this improvement has been down to improvement in governance that have encoruaged investors back in the country and not as a result of an increase in AID

But guess what they are still women like me who are not aware of that AID is donated to their government for thei benefit and have to rely on candle light on materntiy ward, spend 3 hours a day looking for water and when they find it is diseased. This is certainly true of Tanzania and Madagascar two of the other countries I work in

That you see AID as a “business” and part and parcel of good Foreign relations is worrying and speaks volumes. Africa as a continent is very rich with all sorts of raw materials why can’t the AID donors start by paying a fair price for those materials? I would say that would be better for foreign relations.

AID is not the problem per se but it’s management is and one of the complaints si that most it is paid as wages to western folk.

The idea of a dependency culture is not sustainable. Margaret Thatcher tried to put an end to that in her Social Housing policy here in the UK. If that sort of culture is not good enough for western countires why is exported lcok stock and barrel to a developing continent?

Ironically the East African women I work with in my project Ethnic Supplies will tell you that they do not want handotus but simply an opportunity to trade and get a fair wage for their textile and handicrafts.

And another thing, whislt Bono and his chums do a fab job of high lighting the plight of Africans, do you really know what happens after those cameras are switched off and the Press have left??