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

are also decidedly undemocratic African countries that are seeing unprecedented economic growth (for example, Sudan).
    What is clear is that democracy is not the prerequisite for economic growth that aid proponents maintain. On the contrary, it is economic growth that is a prerequisite for democracy; and the one thing economic growth does not need is aid.
    In ‘What Makes Democracies Endure?’ Przeworski et al. offer this fascinating insight – ‘a democracy can be expected to last an average of about 8.5 years in a country with a per capita income under US$1,000 per annum, 16 years in one with income between US$1,000 and US $2,000, 33 years between US$2,000 and US$4,000 and 100 years between US$4,000 and US$6,000 . . . Above US$6,000, democracies are impregnable . . . [they are] certain to survive, come hell or high water.’ It
is
the economy, stupid.
    No one is denying that democracy is of crucial value – it’s just a matter of timing.
    In the early stages of development it matters little to a starving African family whether they can vote or not. Later they may care, but first of all they need food for today, and the tomorrows to come, and that requires an economy that is growing.
Aid effectiveness: a micro—macro paradox
    There’s a mosquito net maker in Africa. He manufactures around 500 nets a week. He employs ten people, who (as with many African countries) each have to support upwards of fifteen relatives. However hard they work, they can’t make enough nets to combat the malaria-carrying mosquito.
    Enter vociferous Hollywood movie star who rallies the masses, and goads Western governments to collect and send 100,000 mosquito nets to the a icted region, at a cost of a million dollars. The nets arrive, the nets are distributed, and a ‘good’ deed is done.
    With the market flooded with foreign nets, however, our mosquito net maker is promptly put out of business. His ten workers can no longer support their 150 dependants (who are now forced to depend on handouts), and one mustn’t forget that in a maximum of five years the majority of the imported nets will be torn, damaged and of no further use.
    This is the micro–macro paradox. A short-term efficacious intervention may have few discernible, sustainable long-term benefits. Worse still, it can unintentionally undermine whatever fragile chance for sustainable development may already be in play.
    Certainly when viewed in close-up, aid appears to have worked. But viewed in its entirety it is obvious that the overall situation has not improved, and is indeed worse in the long run.
    In nearly all cases, short-term aid evaluations give the erroneous impression of aid’s success. But short-term evaluations are scarcely relevant when trying to tackle Africa’s long-term problems. Aid effectiveness should be measured against its contribution to long-term sustainable growth, and whether it moves the greatest numberof people out of poverty in a sustainable way. When seen through this lens, aid is found to be wanting.
    That said, the approach to food aid (launched at the 2005 Food Aid conference in Kansas City 7 ) has tried to push aid in a new direction, one which can potentially help African farmers. The proposal would allow a quarter of the food aid of the United States Food For Peace budget to be used to buy food in poor countries, rather than buying only American-grown food that has to then be shipped across oceans. Instead of flooding foreign markets with American food, which puts local farmers out of business, the strategy would be to use aid money to buy food from farmers within the country, and then distribute that food to the local citizens in need. In terms of the mosquito net example, instead of giving malaria nets, donors could buy from local producers of malaria nets then sell the nets on or donate them locally. There needs to be much more of this type of thinking.
    Between 1950 and the 1980s, the US is estimated to have poured the equivalent of