How do you respond to critics, like Dambisa Moyo, who argues in her book Dead Aid that aid has had a negative impact on Africas development?
All aid is not effective, and not all aid has been used well. There is too much overhead in aid, too many middlemen, too many contractors, too many people making money off of development assistance. We have to find a way to eliminate that and to ensure that a larger percentage of aid dollars gets to people in critical areas. Dambisa Moyo’s voice is an important new one in this discussion, which has been going on for a long time. I fundamentally believe that aid is important. It plays a key role in assisting African nations to move forward. There is no question that aid that gets down to the grass roots – that is used to deal with issues of public health, to fight HIV/Aids, to assist people in dealing with malaria or schistosomiasis; that helps to build capacity – can be a critical and valuable element in our assistance policy. Corruption is an issue closely tied to the effectiveness of development assistance. What can the United States do to help eradicate corruption and promote transp
