Growing up amid a mess of corruption and failing social services taught Dambisa Moyo something few others were saying about her native Zambia: Western government aid has only made things worse. The Harvard- and Oxford-educated economist who describes her age as “older than my country’s 37-year-old life expectancy,” explains her ideas and offers controversial solutions in her recent book, “Dead Aid: Why Aid Is Not Working and How There Is a Better Way for Africa.” She spoke with us this week about the ethos that sustains her uncommon optimism for the continent.
Do you consider yourself to be of a specific faith?
I was raised Presbyterian and went to a Catholic boarding school. And I believe in God — but I don’t believe my faith is any better or worse than anyone else’s. What’s important to me is that religion has a positive influence — that it fosters an ethos that says anything is possible.
Did any event throughout your childhood in Zambia especially influence your belief that governmental aid has a detrimental effect?
I think it’s hard, growing up in a place like Africa, to pinpoint one example. Your life is daily touched by the aid culture, and it has created a society that’s gotten worse with time. If there’s one sight that hits in a very stark way: When I was growing up we never had young people on the street hawking goods. Now, if you travel anywhere, streets are completely covered in hawkers. These are smart young kids, they should be in school — it can’t be right pushing a system where jobs aren’t created. That environment is a time bomb. But the governments are relying so much on aid that they don’t need to find ways of making money elsewhere.
You’ve said your critics, many at Western nongovernmental organizations, have purposefully distorted your message and painted you as opposed to all forms of aid, instead of governmental aid in particular. What about your ideas is so controversial?
I think it’s probably that I’ve blown the lid off the fact that a lot of people are being quite lazy, in the sense they don’t want to do the hard work to put Africa back on track. It’s much easier to keep the status quo. Most Africans recognize it will take a lot of work to overcome the current struggles, but most are looking for a sustainable solution. A lot of people pushing the status quo are not always willing to put in the hard work.
You’ve spoken before many Western audiences brought up on the idea that poverty elsewhere, especially in Africa, is something we ought to alleviate. Is that a healthy mind-set?
No, that fundamentally needs to be changed. I find it to be couched in pity, and a quite insidious view that Africans need to be helped, and can’t do it themselves. There’s a need for a transformative and positive attitude toward Africa — a belief that Africa can and should be part of a partnership with long-term benefits for African societies and for Western society.
You praise the investment in Africa by countries like China and India. As African leaders are approached with those possibilities, what moral guidelines must they heed?
It’s no different from any other government and the restrictions they’d put on foreign investment — more participation from Africans on the ground and fair labor rules. But this is something for them to legislate, not for Western governments to wave their fingers at.
At your core, what is one of your defining beliefs?
I believe that anything is possible, anything at all. My parents, God bless them, have never, ever said I couldn’t do something. Even if they didn’t know what it was, they never ever made me think I couldn’t do it because of any of the limitations that people or society love to place on us. That’s the most important gift a parent can give to a child, and it was at the root of my book: Certainly, theoretically, my continent can emerge from its crisis. I’m not overly sanguine about it, it will be very difficult, but I strongly believe that it is possible.
– Leah Fabel
