CIDA - Too Much, Too Late

Dambisa Moyo loves the big numbers, in part because they wow those who read her book Dead Aid.  On every second or third page she doesn’t just slip them in some kind of narrative but attempts to make them jump off the page in hopes of creating a shock value.  Unfortunately – perhaps even tragically – in a world already dubious about foreign aid, she seeks to latch on to a kind of blind ignorance in her readers in hopes that it will further her cause.What are we to make of her observation that, “Millions in Africa are poorer today because of aid; misery and poverty have not ended but have increased?” Moyo thrusts it out there because she knows a multitude of people think this way and so she seeks to confirm their suspicions.  Except that she’s wrong. For over a decade now economic growth in the poorest part of Africa has averaged over 2%.  Why doesn’t she tell us, as the World Bank has, that 18 sub-Saharan countries have achieved average growth of 3.1%?  Because that would undermine the entire theory of her book.  These numbers mean that that average income in those countries has increased over 50% in slightly over a decade.  This hardly sounds like they are getting poorer.  The reality is that poverty in Africa is falling, not rising.None of the 18 nations referred to here, including Mozambique, Tanzania, Ghana and Namibia, for example, depend at all on oil production and export.  Furthermore, most of them are now democracies.  Observers have been claiming for the last number of years that there has been a clear improvement in governance in those nations.The country of Botswana has been Africa’s largest recipient of aid.  By Moyo’s reasoning they should be devastated; instead, they have become the continent’s showcase of progress.  Then there’s Mozambique, where foreign aid investments have led to sustained economic growth of nearly 5% for over 15 years.  Nations like Uganda report similar findings.Dambisa Moyo, funded by her right-wing supporters in the United States, is banking on our prejudice about Africa to kill foreign aid.  The only means for counteracting this is research and facts based on reputable international sources.  Such evidence is now emerging and is heartening.  Nevertheless, Moyo would rather argue from a past era, where corruption and wasted aid clearly made a bad situation worse.  But Africa can now boast of stronger leaders who have battled corruption and who, through the help of international bodies such as the IMF and World Bank and, yes, CIDA, are experiencing growth unlike anything they’ve seen since independence.  Internet technologies and cell phone use are transforming their societies, drawing them into a larger, more accountable world community.  I’ve seen it personally in Sudan; leaders there understand that international access also brings international exposure and responsibility.  Debts have been lowered and an emerging business class – once again held accountable by their international counterparts and partners – is now revolutionizing Africa.Moyo could have told us this, but in order to prove her point she had to deny the evidence of growth and prosperity emerging on the continent.  So much of this present growth has been built on aid.  Healthier and better-educated Africans are now leading the charge and they didn’t get that way because of the investment in such fields by the private sector.  But now that they have arrived at this new level of achievement, private businesses and corporations are only right to tap into this new-found wealth of human resource and intelligence produced by effective aid disbursements.This has been the case where an author has sensationalized a treatise that depended upon a long-held prejudice.  But it’s too much, too late.  Her poverty numbers are inflated and her timing has been off for a decade or more.