CIDA - "Dead Aid's" Dead End

Dambisa Moyo’s title to her book Dead Aid ironically got the title right. The kind of international investments in humanitarianism she speaks of rather salaciously are passing off the scene following significant failures.  Nevertheless, it is being replaced by a new and smarter thinking kind of international development that isn’t linked to historical necessities such as the Cold War or the wastage inherent in rampant capitalism.To read her book is to get the impression that Africa is a drowning pool of wasted largesse, yet total worldwide aid to the continent is roughly $35 billion per year – a mere blip on the screen compared to what the international community spends on military endeavours or the corporate losses from the recent financial fallout.  It’s difficult enough to get the international community to invest enough funds to meet the targets of the Millennium Development Goals.Yet the aid that is being spent is being invested wiser.  It has significantly cut school fees, with a resulting 30 million more children in school than just a mere decade ago. Between the years 2000-2006, measles deaths have been cut by 90% - a sound investment that now saves over 1,000 children’s lives a day.  It was only a decade ago that observers felt the struggle against HIV/AIDS was hopeless in Africa, especially in the southern regions. But new levels of success have now been attained and modern drugs, once provided to only 10,000 in 2001, are now administered to more than 2 million today.  Malawi, through international aid that provides fertilizer and seeds, has nearly doubled its food production for three years in a row.  One of the great successes has been the delivery of treated mosquito nets that, in turn, have resulted in a 50% reduction in morbidity, and in some regions even higher.The growth in the continent’s varying economies is up, inflation is down and reserves are growing productively.  This past summer, I had the privilege of going over former prime minister Paul Martin’s own work in Africa in detail with him at his home in Quebec.  Now helping to head up the African Development Bank, he pointed out that for the first time, the ADB held its annual meeting outside of Africa, in Singapore, as more countries begin to invest.  Martin is working on a plan with other significant leaders to start up an African version of a common market, where all African nations will work on a coordinated plan to boost their assets, productivity and economies, as well as reduce poverty.These developments are not only significant, but successful, light years ahead of even a decade ago.  One can only wish that Ms. Moyo could have steered us in this direction.  What she wrote is something akin to retelling the failures of capitalism during the Great Depression and saying the same is true today.  Hardly.  The regulations, corporate responsibility and security guarantees emerging from that difficult time prepared the way for the remarkable prosperity that followed. Significant difficulties remain, but the corner was clearly turned during and after the Second World War.  Such a book would be better placed in the “historical fiction” part of the library because it would no longer be reality and built a premise on only part-truths.Moyo’s book is really a “dead end,” a cul-de-sac from which there seems no escape.  But as the realities and success stories listed above reveal, though huge difficulties remain, the continent of Africa, and the wisely-invested foreign aid that assists it, is pulling itself out of the manipulations and poverty of history and emerging to seize a future of its own on the international stage.  This is where CIDA needs to be, after showing such clear success in the last decade in parts of Africa many thought as hopeless.  It’s time to reinvest in the continent in ways that not only save lives, but increases its productivity.  CIDA's departure from long-term development in Africa has come at the most inopportune time and needs to be reconsidered.