Dear Dr. Moyo,
It was with great anticipation that I ordered your book Dead Aid after seeing you interviewed. During the interview, I found your perspectives refreshing, well articulated, and hope-inspiring. I was excited about the space you opened up for alternatives to the status quo.
Reading your well-researched critique of aid as a dominant way for the western world to support African countries I was once again inspired that indeed, there are other much more realistic, sustainable, and equitable possibilities. As you indicate, there are not only two options: either provide a never-ending increasing flow of aid, or turn a blind eye. Further, you demonstrated how foreign intervention via aid is in fact a major contributor to the corruption and conflicts that occur in many aid-receiving countries. Rather than presenting those conditions as further ‘evidence’ that more aid is needed, you illustrate the role aid plays in perpetuating those conditions. Your critical engagement shed light on these complex international relations. I have not been effective in articulating my discomfort with this paternalistic model of care, and your arguments are insightful and indeed a contribution.
As I read further on (to your proposition that increased reliance on international trade is Africa’s ‘way out’), however, my experience of the book changed. The critical engagement that was so effectively exhibited in the first half of the book disappeared. You seemed to select evidence that supports your proposition, and strategically overlook the abundance of evidence that foreign corporate ownership of African resources, infrastructure, and development will doom the continent to even more international dependency. The alternatives you offer simply tie African nations to the global economy in such a way that they will only thrive if other countries are thriving more. If (as is currently the case) there is an economic crisis which places pressure on countries outside of Africa to subsidize and support their own local manufacturing and service provisions, African countries will once again be left to fend for themselves with no control over their own governance. But worse, they will not even hold the rights to their own infrastructure.
The resistance I feel to your solutions is not merely a fabrication of what might be. Experience has shown repeatedly in other parts of the world that the rewards to be reaped by large-scale foreign investment in Africa and large-scale trade with African manufacturers are far greater for the countries doing the investing than for those providing the resources and services. Not only that, offering a model in which the average mosquito net maker (to borrow your example) is to benefit simply from the trickle down of investments far ‘above’ him is shortsighted and unrealistic, not to mention inequitable. The model you offer projects the possibility of a thriving consumer economy for all of Africa: exactly the growth model that has been demonstrated as unsustainable in America, especially for Mr. Mosquito Net, who receives no bailout under such circumstances.
Allow me to contrast your example with a local example of my own: the fisherman of 20th century Newfoundland, Canada. Quite poor and quite detached from the local market, Newfoundlanders sustained themselves largely by fishing. Most settlements were along the coast, accessible only by boat, and nearly all men were involved in the fishing industry. Small boats, small nets, small yields: but large enough to sustain their small communities. (Please note, I am not suggesting life was easy. Government intervention was indeed necessary. The kind of intervention you advocate, at the scale to which you propose, however, is highly problematic).
Enter offshore international fisheries. Big boats, big nets, massive yields. The results? Far more than enough to feed these Newfoundlanders, but strangely, that was not what happened. The fishing vessels reaped the benefits of this seemingly unlimited resource by selling them overseas. And worse, because they were fishing so ‘efficiently’ offshore, the local fishermen closer to shore began to experience a decrease in their yield. They soon had no choice but to join the dragnet crew.
That’s OK, we might think, by Dead Aid logic. This gave them stable employment, good wages, and the ability to feed their families with far less backbreaking work. A win-win situation – much like the scenario you paint for your mosquito net maker with the entry of Chinese development in Africa. It is true: during this time, Newfoundland enjoyed more access to the international community, a growing consumer culture was cultivated, roads were developed, schools and hospitals were built. But then what?
The fish got smaller and smaller, until in 1992 a moratorium on cod fishing was put in place (and still is) for the foreseeable future. The big boats had to move on, and took their ‘stable’ jobs with them. Many Newfoundland men were forced to move away from their families to Alberta with its promise of unlimited wealth: oil. We are now seeing just a few short years later that this promise also came with a few strings attached. Newfoundlanders, now with their unpayable mortgages in Fort McMurray, Alberta (thanks to the increase in accessible credit, which you also advocate), are heading home to their Atlantic island in droves: with huge debt, no fish, and no prospect of work. All while the Newfoundland government made the huge step from a ‘have-not’ to a ‘have’ province in Canada. So much for the trickle down.
And, as I’m sure you know, this is not an isolated case. I realize there are many differences between the scenario I paint and the one you are now drawing our attention to. This is because of the particularity of each local context in its time, place, and history, which is exactly my point (and I believe it was yours, oddly, at the beginning of your book). The needs of all communities cannot be addressed with the same broad brush approach worldwide. If it is – if the Dead Aid approach is embraced – I fear your mosquito net maker will have more in common with my fisherman than is currently the case.
What alternative am I offering? The one I thought you were working towards in the first half of your book, which I so enjoyed. You spoke of a need for increased government responsibility on a local level. With current economic conditions worldwide, there is growing awareness of the unsustainability of the growth model economy. Increasing Africa’s dependency on foreign countries through the global market is simply relocating the dependency and corruption that is currently instigated by aid.
On the contrary, decreasing African dependency on the more capitalist countries in the global economy is required for Africa to sustain itself amidst unpredictability (which is, as we all know, the only thing we can predict). The Dead Aid model will only work (and even then, only maybe) if conditions are unchanging and optimal. Of course, that is a house of cards on which to build the foreign policies of an entire continent. Instead, as you indicated in your critique of aid, it is imperative that Africa look inward and draw from its own expertise, its own skills, its own resources, and most of all, its own people.
Governments play a role in this indeed, but as a buffer – not to invite large-scale foreign investment and trade, but to resist it. If foreign aid was drastically reduced (as you suggest) and large-scale foreign investment was kept at bay (as I suggest), African governments would then a) be forced to listen to their own citizen’s voices when decision making rather than the luring voices of aid-providing countries, b) have the capacity to develop a thriving local economy that employs its own people, buys its own goods, and sustains its own infrastructure, and c) be better equipped to weather the turbulence of global economies in their ups and their downs.
What is the international community’s responsibility in all of this? First, to ramp down the obscene amounts of money feeding corruption at a government level in Africa in the name of aid. Second, to stop using the African continent as our own development playground, taking solace in the fact that there may be some unintended benefits trickling down to Africans here and there. And third, to think more sustainably in our own consumption, which would include being much more responsible about how we worm our way into Africa to extract its resources, leaving civil wars in our wake. International involvement in Africa must be much more socially responsible than it currently is, and must be more socially responsible than Dead Aid proposes.
I am not suggesting no trade whatsoever, no investment whatsoever, and no aid whatsoever. I am suggesting an approach that is more future-oriented, takes into account the failures of the capitalist economy, and does not offer a proposal in which Africa’s growth depends on the crumbs that are left behind after the powerhouses leave. Perhaps more importantly, I am not suggesting something for Africa that I would not recommend in my own back yard. These recommendations are not only for ‘developing’ countries or for communities a body of water away from me. These recommendations are highly relevant for Canada (my home country) at the present time as well. Responsiveness is necessary for sustainability. Diversity is necessary for sustainability. Moreover, the growth model is counterproductive to sustainability.
I appreciate you having opened this dialogue, as it is an important one. But I urge you to engage as critically with trade as you do with aid – the implications of each if done to excess can be devastating.
Sincerely,
Janet Newbury
