Can Africa survive without western aid ?

Wow, that’s a kind of interesting subject ! This evening I got a chance to attend a public lecture at the University of Washington (UW) . Dr. Dambisa Moyo was talking about her recent book entitled ” Dead Aid: Why Aid Is Not Working and How There Is a Better Way for Africa ” . Before the lecture I was thinking, wow she’s gonna be one of those “Experts on Africa” !  I saw she really got an extremendous academic background and a lot of people were there to listen to her and ask questions . The only problem I have is that I didn’t read that book yet and I should comment only according to what I heard from the lady at the lecture .

I don’t think she is the first to talk about the subject and I know some African figures who talk a lot about being self-relevant and efficient . What I agree with Dr. Moyo is that obiously corruption was, is or will be the worst barrier to the use of aid , but I have to say that corruption is a general barrier to development regardless the fact that there is aid or not . Few people should disagree if I say that there are some places where The Aid really saved lives and contributed to the establishment of infrastructure and public institutions in Africa . I think the aid contributed somehow to my education. I was surprised that in her talk she emphasized more on the wrong side of things with Africans not efficiently using The Aid during the last 60 years , but I was also shocked by the fact that she didn’t mention the way those western ” Aid Providers ” should use or have been using The Aid to manipulate Africans  and that’s a worse case for me . She also said that Chinese have a better approach to Africa . I was in Beijing in October 2006 when they hada  The China-Africa Summit, and I used to sein the Beijing subway some writings  like ” 爱上了非洲 ” . That was fun and we still have to see wht comes next !

Here is a copy of the summary from the lecture .