Can Western Aid Help Africa?
• William Easterly is Professor of Economics at New York University, where he is also affiliated with the Africana Studies program and co-director of the Development Research Institute. He is Non-Resident Fellow at the Center for Global Development. He previously worked for 16 years as a research economist at the World Bank. He is author of the book The Elusive Quest for Growth: Economists’ Adventures and Misadventures in the Tropics (2001), as well as of numerous academic articles. He has lived and travelled in many places around the world, most intensively in Africa, Latin America, and Russia. Professor Easterly will discuss a long list of development panaceas that failed in Africa: foreign aid, structural adjustment lending, schooling, family planning, debt relief, etc., and suggest the way forward is to put in place institutions that give individuals incentives and opportunities to invest in their own prosperity. • Dr. Francis Teal is a deputy director at the Centre for the Study o
