You Went Live 8 Concert So You Have Done Your Part

Wilhelm: Telling Africa to Drop Dead (Aid)
Tagged with: dead aid heather wilhelm
When it comes to African poverty, everyone, it seems, wants to help—and “help” usually means foreign aid. The omnipresent Bono, for instance, runs the “One” campaign, which calls for a significant increase in government aid. George W. Bush, meanwhile, nearly quadrupled the amount of America’s direct bilateral assistance to Africa. Madonna recently showed her commitment to foreign aid—accented by colorful F-bombs—at 2005’s “Live 8” concert extravaganza. The concert’s organizer, aging rock star Bob Geldof, is so passionate about foreign aid that he told the International Herald Tribune that something must be done to help Africa “even if it doesn’t work.”
Here’s the problem: It doesn’t work—and it might even make things worse. That’s the argument of Dead Aid, a new book by Dambisa Moyo, an economist born in Zambia, educated at Oxford and Harvard, and who is currently raising major hackles in development circles.

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