Last week, ONE, the advocacy organization founded by Bono, apparently sent out an email to some of the Africans in their address book. The subject: Dambisa Moyo’s new book Dead Aid, recently released in the US. The plan: to persuade some high profile Africans to provide quotes in support of ONE’s position that Moyo’s ideas are dangerously mistaken.
The vigorous and public debate that has greeted the release of Dead Aid is a good thing for transparency and effectiveness in aid, no matter what you think of Moyo’s book. ONE apparently doesn’t agree. There are two things wrong with ONE’s campaign to discredit Moyo.
First of all, ONE misrepresents Moyo’s ideas to better tear them down. For example, ONE characterizes Moyo’s plan as a call to “shut off all aid in 5 years,” when Moyo is very clear about excluding humanitarian aid and NGO/ charitable aid from her discussion.
Second, rounding up some Africans who happen to disagree with Zambian-born Moyo doesn’t alter the quality of her proposals, which deserve to be debated on their own merits. (We’ve blogged about the intellectually dishonest technique of the “authenticity trump card” before.) When the ONE campaign says in its email “We are collecting quotes from Africans who might disagree with her…”, it seems to be saying we will not trust or allow Africans to have this debate on its merits on their own.
The people at ONE seem to implicitly justify this campaign by portraying themselves as the only small voice bold enough to speak out against Moyo. An article on their website claims that “while Dead Aid has been getting a lot of buzz, it hasn’t been getting much, if any, scrutiny.” Even a cursory scan of Moyo’s press shows that Dead Aid has gotten reviews from all sides, plenty of them vociferously critical.
Do Bono and ONE yet understand that aid to the poor is not just a matter a celebrity fund-raising, but a difficult challenge that needs a vigorous debate on what works and what doesn’t?
16 Comments
One thing I don’t really understand is this idea that humanitarian and NGO / charity work is somehow different. For a start, the UK and other governments fund a huge amount of humanitarian and NGO activity. Where does this fit in?
But also, more importantly, there’s a lot of evidence that charity and humanitarian is just as likely to cause adverse effects on government-to-government aid. I don’t get the artificial distinction.
If the debate sparked by Moyo’s book is ‘a good thing’ no matter how daft what Moyo actually says is, why are do you also constantly attacking Bono for speaking out on aid? Isn’t the ONE campaign by the same logic also a good thing for ‘transparency and effectiveness in aid’? Or does Bono deserve your ire for some other reason – because he’s not enough of an ‘expert’, perhaps?
Round two! …. Are you kidding me?
Thank you for yet another superfluous insight into the mislead campaigning on both sides of the aid debate (… taking it that AidWatch isn’t just meant to amuse the cynics!!!???)
For something more interesting, what’s your take on the newly published UN report by the Commission of Experts of the President of the General Assembly on reforms of the international monetary and financial system? (chaired by Joe Stiglitz)
http://www.un.org/ga/president/63/letters/recommendationExperts200309.pdf
That’ll be all … Pardon my, well, ‘knee-jerk’ reaction. Still in demand it seems.
I want people to be energized to do something. Really, I do. ONE has gotten a lot of people to do something. I hate that, for me, the “something” isn’t satisfying.
I appreciate this post for illuminating one particular fact:
This makes it easier for me to tell all those good-hearted, well-intentioned friends of mine to stop supporting an organization that clearly doesn’t know what it’s talking about:
If they can’t do a simple internet search (or in my case a search on “Moyo” in my blog feed), what kind of information is supporting their decisions on where aid should be going?
Problem is, I have yet to come up with a convincing alternative for my good-hearted friends. No one finds it sexy to volunteer at the local soup kitchen these days…
I have to disagree with the premise that there isn’t a lot of discussion going on about aid effectiveness and impact. We’ve got the new metrics movement in the non-profit/charity world, the longstanding gov’t donor obsession with logframes and indicators, and then emotional critics like Michael Maren have been around for quite a while. And I’ve never met anyone working in international aid who didn’t spend large amounts of their time thinking and reading about its impact or lack thereof.
It looks like ONE have been embarrassed by this leak, because they have responded to it already to try to justify their email:
http://www.one.org/blog/2009/03/30/more-on-dead-aid/
The ONE fellows have deliberately mis-read Dambisa’s argument because they know that should her recommendations be embraced, the goose laying the golden egg [the aid billions they are fattening themselves on] will be gone. Dambisa doesn’t argue against humanitarian aid but the other manifestations of this well-intended evil; the aid that ends up in a few people’s bank accounts and not the intended beneficiaries. The ONE chaps mention HIV/AIDS as among the critical aid-receiving areas that are threatened by Dambisa’s arguments; is it because there are more people living on HIV/AIDS than those living with it? If so, is ONE in the former group? Away with the notion that nothing good can come from Africa.
One is misrepresenting Dambisa’s ideas. She makes it clear that humanitarian and charitable aid is excluded and One blankets everything as excluded by Dambisa.I guess they have not read the book or watched her interviews cos she is crystal clear that she is against direct aid.
If One claims that foreign aid has achieved economic growth and reduced poverty in Africa, then they should give us evidence to prove their claims because as an African living in Africa, I am yet to see that evidence in my lifetime.
So far,what I have witnessed is that aid benefits the already stiff pockets of corrupt leaders who invest in offshore accounts, arms, luxury holidays and presidential jets. Why should the West continue to give more aid and fuel this fire? Are we really that ignorant that we can’t learn from history? I thought 60 years and a trillion of dollars already wasted were enough evidence to send a message home that this product isn’t worth selling.
My first question to Mr. Easterly is:
Sir, were you not working for the World Bank during a time when it was part of putting some of the most onerous debt burdens and trade restrictions on the world’s poorest countries, including many nations in Africa?
Did you not work at the World Bank during the time when the notorious HIPC conditionalities were placed on the world’s developing nations which, along with the trade restrictions that has almost crippled Africa’s percentage of world trade – leaving African countries devoid of the needed capital to be able to attend to their own countries’ internal crises?
These HIPC conditionalities and trade restrictions have been largely responsible for the growing need in Africa for additional funds in these nations’ coffers to provide sanitation, education, infrastructure and health care for their people.
In other words – the policies that were developed at the World Bank during YOUR time there as an economist, Mr. Easterly, have been largely responsible for creating the lack of capital in African government coffers that have resulted in their need for foreign assistance for donor governments!
Thus, IT IS HYPOCRITICAL for you to downrate the efforts of organizations like ONE and others who have tried to fill the void of capital for African governments to try to develope certain areas of their nations when you were a part of an institution that instituted policies which UNDERDEVELOPED African governments’own abilities to take care of their nations’ needs!
You were part of CREATING this problem for Africa – and all you can do is criticize organizations that are trying to undo the damage that you were a part of creating?
PLEASE!!!!! I am not bought and sold that easy.
Before people criticize ONE, they had better make sure that they know your own unseemly history at the World Bank.
Isn’t the attention devoted to Dambiso Moyo (and perhaps Andrew Mwenda) at least partially a playing of the “authenticity trump card?” Bill, your own work is more forceful and challenging to the Bonos of the world than is Moyo’s. And yet I’m willing to bet Moyo’s publisher has invested a lot more in her than yours did in you. Part of that may be because the New York Times Mag would rather put up a shot of Moyo in 6 inch heels and a miniskirt than it would of one of you, but part of it is the novelty, and implicit “authenticity”, of an African dissing aid to Africa. I’m not saying you’re responsible for the tack, but I think you’ve been complicit.
I cry foul on your criticism that ONE is “playing the authenticity card” simply by contacting Africans.
First, Moyo relies on contacts with many Africans in her book. Somehow that’s OK for her but not for her opponent?
Second, Moyo herself is arguably benefitting from “authenticity card” treatment. Why does she and her lightly regarded book get all the love (at least from her publisher) and not you, Bill? It may be that 6-inch heels and a miniskirt look better on her (see the NYT Mag profile if you’re wondering what I’m talking about), but there is undeniably something to the fact that she is an African calling for an end to aid to Africa that has raised her profile.
Third, isn’t the crux of your criticism of Big Aid that it isn’t responsive to people who are supposed to benefit from it? Shouldn’t bringing people in Africa into a debate of the worthiness of aid in general therefore be a positive step?
Prof. Easterly,
As a first generation Ghanaian-American and NYU-Wagner student, I am very disturbed by the tone of your posting. I am also disturbed by the pseudo celebrity that Ms. Moyo has achieved by publishing literature that repeats your ideologies that Wagner students like myself have been exposed to for years.
I respect the views you express in your articles however, I take offense to the words: “rounding up some Africans who happen to disagree with Zambian-born Moyo doesn’t alter the quality of her proposals…” The tone in that excerpt leads me to believe that you are so immersed in the camaraderie you have found with Ms. Moyo that you do not respect the “some” Africans who disagree with her.
Furthermore, I completely understand her critique of the foreign aid system and how it could use reform, but like President Obama said, and I paraphrase, why use a chainsaw when a scalpel is all that is needed.
Finally, I just wanted you to know that there are is a significant number of young, educated, and publicly active Africans who disagree with Moyo’s views because of the extreme solutions she suggests. To follow your logic, I feel we deserve the respect to call her book Dead Aid, dead wrong because we ARE Africans. However, I just want to emphasize that Africans can learn from other countries and from each other, I am just disappointed that you have lost hope in the African institutions that are attempting to make a difference.
-Akua Apraku
Akua,
Regarding Ms. Moyo’s support (or lack of it) among Africans, a “unscientific” look at this using Facebook yields the following:
Dambisa Moyo’s Fans on Facebook are greater 1100 (the majority of them with clearly African names).
The “Dambisa Moyo Does Not Speak For All Africans” group on Facebook has 24 members. It has the following motto: “We are tired of the West’s infatuation with Dambisa Moyo. It is high time we set her straight.”
These figures jibe with the anecdotal evidence one gets from conversations with other Africans. Of course, this doesn’t mean that everyone agrees with everything Ms. Moyo says…but the basic thrust of wanting to find a better mode of development is something that resonates. Taking ownership of our destiny is inextricably interwoven with a rejection of an aid driven model no matter how sincere the intentions behind such a model.
The financial crisis is now seeing western banks and industries being bailed out by their government funds, and these are now in a better position to take over assets in developing countries which do not have the billions of dollars to rescue their banks and industries. And amidst all this, World Bank is now seing an opporunity to boost their own importance through their calls for 0.7% of this money as aid. Aid is seen as a counterbalance to national assets of developing countries being sold off cheaply to donors, as had happened in Zambia.
Another book authored by the Ugandan Intellectual and the former Executive Director of the South Centre, Dr. Yash Tandon, titled “Ending Aid Dependence” talks of how developing countries reliant on aid want to escape this dependence, and yet they appear unable to do so.
The book then provides 7 steps for countries to liberate themselves from the aid that pretends to be developmental but is not. The book provides case studies of how misguided policies of donors wrecked havoc in Zimbabwe and Zambia.
http://fahamubooks.org/catalog/?category_id=198
Dambisa could not have done better, at this critical moment in history, than to posit such a powerful idea. More often than not, in the past, people like Dambisa got ostracized. Galileo comes to mind.
Thankfully, It never killed the revolutionary idea.
Let us ignore the armchair analysts and economists who live in a bubble of academic rigor, and look at the real situation on the ground in Africa. I would invite any of them to come and live in Africa long enough to see for themselves what Aid dependency really means.
In Gulu, the war torn Northern area of Uganda, a dependency syndrome worse than the war itself, has entrenched itself in the minds of the Internally displaced people in the camps. Ironically, Even Humanitarian aid has its shortfalls.
Last year, a study carried out by researchers reveals that Diabetes levels are higher among young children in the IDP camps, because of the GM food being given to them in the form of Aid. Worst of all, the IDPs have lost all sense of initiative and are now dependant on the myriad of NGOs plying Gulu’s Aid sector. It’s a shame, and this is exactly the dependency that Dambisa is talking about.
Advocates of Aid, whenever challenged, tend to retreat to the comfortable confines of Humanitarianism. With hindsight, it is easy to see why aid is justified in the first place. Question is, if all of that aid that helped 31 million African children go to school had not been given in the first place, would they have never gone to school at all? Would they have never been able to figure out their bad situation?
Advice given by the IMF and the World bank has now unraveled and been discredited. African governments were discouraged from developing safety nets for their citizens because they had to control fiscal discipline. Whenever a few enlightened technocrats opposed these ideas, they were asked, ‘so can your government pay for it?’, Answer. No. Solution: We will give you Aid but only if………..
The story goes on and on…..
Furthermore, it is a conundrum that the poorest nations on earth in Africa wage the most wars. Wars are expensive businesses. Who pays for it? ….It is Aid. Cutting of aid would force the corrupt regimes to rethink their financing strategies, eventually there would be no incentive for war, too costly therefore not necessary. In the 60’s and 70’s, more wars that ravaged the continent were financed by foreign sources for foreign interests….
It’s a myriad of things that Aid distorts, we can’t delve into all of them here.
All I can say is, Go Dambisa, Go girl. We are behind you.
Let me start by stating the obvious: ONE knows that most political issues are reduced to a couple of sound bites like “end poverty in our lifetimes” and “money down the rat hole,” so it is trying to discredit and silence Moyo because it knows/believes her ideas are harmful. Everyone knows the “authenticity trump card” has no intellectual merit, but this isn’t an serious debate: it’s a public relations battle, and Moyo main PR tactic is playing the authenticity card so why shouldn’t ONE?
Now let me draw the obvious conclusion: If you want to have a serious debate about aid, then I would avoid pointing people toward ONE’s PR machine or Moyo’s proposal since not a single scholar has endorsed it as a piece of serious scholarship. If you want to have PR/soundbite battle then I wouldn’t try to take the high ground when other sides use the conventional tactics.
For disclosure interned for ONE in 2007-2008.