Bill Gates could have made his point about the relevance of continued aid, in some form, to African countries without saying that Dr. Moyo did not know what she was talking about. By virtue of being born in Africa and having part of her education in Zambia she knows something about Africa, in deed, quite a lot. But I will not say all her knowledge about the determinants of economic development in Africa is relevant to Africa’s current conditions. Especially when she quotes the BRICS as countries Africa could be compared to. To begin with, a country such as India, or even Brazil, produces thousands of engineers and scientists annually. These countries have functioning universities and institutions that are quite lacking in Africa. Without the right infrastructure to create or adopt technologies that can increase growth, without the right market structure to absorb our products through internal trade( trade among ECOWAS countries is still less than 3 %, excluding oil products), we will continue being dependent on aid. Dy Moyo’s institutions like the World Bank and IMF had emphasized growth at the expense of equity for a long time, and this strategy has created massive inequity among African countries.
The problem is not the aid as much as how it is used to increase growth and encourage distributive justice—how the fruits of growth are divvied up among the various interest groups in society, especially the downtrodden.
Kwaku
Chicago
From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com [mailto:usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Okwy Okeke
Sent: Friday, May 31, 2013 9:10 AM
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Bill Gates vs. Dambisa Moyo. Two fighting!
Try as hard as I could, I only saw a pugilist in the ring, and she was not fighting, rather was winking at people to buy her book and talk about her, which you just did, and I am doing, so she is indeed a fighter, and btw, I enjoyed the extra copied that I took from your library.
Her point is well taken, and could have been made without the dressing it came in,... and there I thought it was peculiar to Nigerians.
There would never be consensus on most economic theories. The austerity vs stimulus debate, the latest in the unending struggles between the 2 dominant camps in Capitalist theory continues almost 80 years after Maynard Keynes confused a U.S. president with the incongruous argument that spending what the government did not have was the only way out of the Great Depression.
Last time I was at the airport traveling to Prof. Achebe's funeral rites, I got less treatment than the other guy that turned a politician just the other day from teaching at CUNY, and to that I promised myself to look for what remains available to mere mortals like me but not to him; the sister is a smashing pretty face, and yes, a private citizen could say so and get away with it.
Best of the weekend.
Okwy
------------------------------------------
We face forward,...we face neither East or West: we face forward.......Kwame Nkrumah
----- Original Message -----
From: Ikhide <xokigbo@yahoo.com>
To: "USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com" <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Cc:
Sent: Thursday, 30 May 2013, 13:53
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Bill Gates vs. Dambisa Moyo. Two fighting!
Dead aid! Live fight! Two fighting! Hmmmm!
-Ikhide
http://www.dambisamoyo.com/?post=dr-dambisa-moyo-responds-to-bill-gates-personal-attacks
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