Dead Aid by Dambisa Moyo
Dead Aid is a 150 page book with a 24 page bibliography - so it reads more like a long white paper than a book. Dambisa Moyo has an impressive resume, much alluded to in both the book jacket and the foreword by Niall Ferguson. The author has worked for the World Bank and Goldman Sachs and she has a PhD from Oxford University. Impressive no doubt. Even more impressive is the fact that she was born and raised in Zambia so her profile fits neatly into the "Solutions to Africa's problems by Africans" paradigm.

The book itself makes its case almost clinically, backed up by statistics and research papers from an entire spectrum of economists. Dead Aid is divided in two sections, The World of Aid, which examines the 'aid-economy', the players and the harmful affects on African countries' dependence on western aid. The second section, A World Without Aid proposes several venues open to the developing countries in Africa to raise money and be independent - the most important being trade and raising capital from the markets. Ms. Moyo manages to connect a lot of different African ailments to aid, from corruption to dictatorship and she makes a convincing case. Her solutions make sense as well - at least to a strong believer in free trade like myself. The hopelessness of it all is that it is almost impossible to imagine the West will roll back its Aid of Africa model that has failed so consistently and for so long.

The book's main weakness is that it makes for almost dreary reading. Ms. Moyo may be a brainy economist, she is not a writer. The book suffers from a dearth of wit and style. The author does try to indulge in a hypothetical by creating the composite African country of Dongo and examinig how the country may funciton if her suggestions were realized. But in the end her vision reads less like a fully realized painting and more like a stick figure drawing. I recommend reading the book, only because it serves as a starting point for examining the issue of tackling the many problems of the African continent.

Labels: 2010, africa, aid, dambisa moyo, development, economics, economists, finance, microfinance, world bank, zambia

posted by ubaid - Sunday, March 07, 2010 at 12:41 PM - 0 comments - post anonymously

Book Review - Dark Star Safari: Overland from Cairo to Capetown by Paul Theroux

My first Theroux travelogue was Ghost Train to the Eastern Star, a journey in which the venerable travel writer retraced a trip he took thirty five years ago. In Dark Star Safari Mr. Theroux does something similar - he goes on a trip from Cairo to Cape Town, covering the landmass of that great and wondrous continent, a place that seems to cling hungrily to its moniker of the dark continent.

Theroux eschews air travel, as anyone whose read any of his travel books will know well. Mr. Theroux Africa is on a different planet, on a Dark Star as the author keeps reminding us. He compares the Africa of 2001 with the Africa he lived in forty years ago when he taught at a small school in Malawi and then at the Makerere University in Uganda, and most everywhere he sees an Africa "on the wane". He encounters pretentious aid workers driving around in expensive Land Rovers, self righteous missionaries, indifferent bureaucracy and superstitious politicians. He also meets some old friends and makes a few new ones. I found the story of an almost deaf Naguib Mahfouz holding court a Cairo hotel delightful.

There is much to recommend and very little to distract. f you are familiar with Paul Theroux' other work you already know his writing is not exactly full of hope but it is excellent. Highly recommended.

Labels: 2009, africa, paul theroux, travel, travelogue

posted by ubaid - Tuesday, January 19, 2010 at 4:12 PM - 0 comments - post anonymously