Is aid destroying or saving Africa?

Is aid good or bad? 

Is sending trillions of dollars into sub-Saharan Africa a waste of time?  Should we pull out and let Africa and other developing nations fend for themselves?

Jeffrey Sachs - author of the End of Poverty and director of the Earth Institute thinks it is not a waste of time.  Sachs campaigns tirelessly for the poor and and calls for nations to fulfil their Millennium Promises and contribute 0.7% of the GDP to the poor.  i.e. for every one hundred dollars that the a country earns, 70 cents is given to aid.

As Sachs says

The costs of action are a tiny fraction of the costs of inaction. And yet we must carry out these tasks in a context of global inertia, proclivities to war and prejudice, and understandable skepticism around the world that this time can be different from the past. 

Check out the first chapter of Sachs' book here and an interview with him here.

Peter Singer - an Australian philosopher and author of The Life You Can Save - agrees with Sachs and makes the following argument:

1. If you saw someone in immediate danger, you would unquestionably be obliged to rescue that person even at some personal cost. For instance, you would save a drowning person even if you had to ruin your expensive clothes in the swim. 

2. Even if you don't realize it, there are desperately poor people in Africa and elsewhere who are in mortal danger comparable to drowning, and they could be rescued if you offered a little aid.

According to Singer, not saving a drowning child because it would ruin your expensive suit is as morally repugnant as not saving a child's life in Africa because it is too expensive.

Sachs and Singer are not without their critics though.  Many have pointed out that even in Singer's parallel between a drowning child and a starving child holds, it still raises the bigger question of exactly who to give your hard earned dollars to.

To Oxfam? Save the Children? The UN?  How do we know these organizations are legit and that our money is being used efficiently?

Dambisa Moyo - an Zambian economist - has radically different ideas.  She wants all government aid cut from Africa in five years.  She is critical of Singer's approach as it is very much focused on the donor, rather than the recipient.  In Singer's model, the donor's guilt ends as soon as they put their check in the mail.

This is not good enough for Moyo.  She argues that this detached giving does more harm that good and leads to a charity state with only illusionary gains made.  Moyo's views are further expanded in this piece.

Check this out for a comparison of Moyo's book ("Dead Aid") and Singer's book ("The Life You Can Save").

And then there is William Easterly, author of The White Man's Burden - which is a scathing attack on Jeffrey Sachs' approach.  Click here for Easterly's review of the End of Poverty. He is also has serious problems with Singer's approach.

Easterly favours the Africans looking after Africans approach.  He feels that as aid is withdrawn, market forces will kick in and all will be well.

But do market forces apply to someone without disposable income with which to make a decision with? If you're in a poverty trap where you don't have enough money to feed yourself, then how can you expect to "vote with your dollars"?

Sachs and Singer vs. Moyo and Easterly.

Who has it right? What do you thiunk?