The Africa Report: You talk about the vicious cycle of aid. How has it damaged Africa?


Dambisa Moyo: There are four big problems that emerge from aid. One is the obvious one: the corruption, the fact that you’re giving somebody something for free, no strings attached. The second problem is aid dependency, which is the whole notion that you create a society heavily burdened and laden with bureaucracy, which is very inefficient and essentially kills off the entrepreneurial culture. The third problem has to do with this economic term called ‘Dutch disease’, although they usually call it the oil curse. It actually applies to aid as well, where you have these large inflows of capital which really kill off the export sector. Then finally, disenfranchising the middle class; governments become beholden or responsible to report to donors and they don’t have any obligation to report to the domestic citizenry.


Do you think charitable aid causes the same problems?


To me, the current situation in Africa should not be, and is not, the model under which I think anybody wants a continent to survive. Do we want 25,000 NGOs running around a continent? If the aspiration is to ensure economic growth in these countries and reduce poverty, then the ultimate goal should be [for NGOs] to say that we want to ensure that at some point in the future we no longer exist because we would have attained those goals. The question then becomes, are these NGOs doing what will ensure they cease to exist? It’s not obvious that they are.


How responsible is the aid industry for continuing the open-ended aid cycle?


We know that countries that have relied on aid have consistently done worse than countries that don’t. We know that countries that have used the capital markets have much more transparency, they often attract more foreign direct investment than countries who do not. Why are we focusing on an interventionist model when we know that this is not the model that has delivered growth?


Should some government-to-government aid strengthen civil society in Africa?


What you should be looking to do is to ensure that you have the growth of a middle class – which is what happens in the rest of the world – a middle class that has economic power and therefore starts to push on certain civil society reforms or requirements, things like property rights and so on. From my perspective it seems very short-sighted and almost naïve to continue to rely on aid.

Dambisa Moyo is a former banker with Goldman Sachs 
and author of Dead Aid: Why aid is not working and how there is a better way for Africa

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