Free Dead Aid: Why Aid Is Not Working and How There Is a Better Way for Africa by Dambisa Moyo

autocratic or dictatorial regimes.
    Under this sky, democracy is seen as Africa’s economic salvation: erasing corruption, economic cronyism, and anticompetitive and inefficient practices, and removing once and for all the ability for a sitting incumbent to capriciously seize wealth. Democracies pursue more equitable and transparent economic policies, the types of policies that are conducive to sustainable economic growth in the long run.
    Moreover, the Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen argues that because democratically elected policymakers run the risk of losing political office, they are more vigilant about averting economic disasters. 5 Among mainly developing economies another study found that democratically accountable governments met the basic needs of their citizens by ‘as much as 70 per cent more’ than non-democratic states. 6 But, perhaps most of all, donors are convinced that across the political spectrum democracy (and only democracy) is positively correlated to economic growth.
    Although the potential positive aspects of democracy have dominated discourse (and aid policy), Western donors and policymakers have essentially chosen to ignore the protests of those who argue that democracy, at the early stages of development, is irrelevant, and may even be harmful. In an aid-dependent environment such views are easy to envisage. Aid-funded democracy does not guard against a government bent on altering property rights for its own benefit. Of course, this lowers the incentive for investment and chokes off growth.
    The uncomfortable truth is that far from being a prerequisite for economic growth, democracy can hamper development as democratic regimes find it difficult to push through economically beneficial legislation amid rival parties and jockeying interests. In a perfect world, what poor countries at the lowest rungs of economic development need is not a multi-party democracy, but in fact a decisive benevolent dictator to push through the reforms required to get the economy moving (unfortunately, too often countries end up with more dictator and less benevolence). The Western mindset erroneously equates a political system of multi-party democracy with high-quality institutions (for example, effective rule of law, respected property rights and an independent judiciary, etc.). But the two are not synonymous.
    One only has to look to the history of Asian economies (China, Indonesia, Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan and Thailand) to see how this is borne out. And even beyond Asia, Pinochet’s Chile and Fujimori’s Peru are examples of economic success in lands bereft of democracy. The reason for this ‘anomaly’ is that each ofthese dictators, whatever their faults (and there were many), was able to ensure some semblance of property rights, functioning institutions, growth-promoting economic policies (for example, in fiscal and monetary management) and an investment climate that buttressed growth – the things that democracy promises to do. This is not to say that Pinochet’s Chile was a great place to live; it does, however, demonstrate that democracy is not the only route to economic triumph. (Thanks to its economic success Chile has matured into a fully fledged democratic state, with the added accolade of, in 2006, installing South America’s first woman President – Michelle Bachelet.)
    The obvious question to ask is, has foreign aid improved democracy in Africa? The answer to this is yes – certainly in terms of the number of African countries that hold elections, although still many of them are illiberal (people go the polls, but in some places the press remains restricted, and the rule of law fickle).
    The real question to ask is, has the insertion of democracy via foreign aid economically benefited Africa? To this question the answer is not so clear. There are democratic countries in Africa that continue to struggle to post convincing growth numbers (Senegal, at just 3 per cent growth in 2006), and there