I disagree heartily with the notion that Africa needs more economic AID to help spur its own economic growth. Indeed as evidence has clearly shown the last 50 years of economic AID have hardly helped any single country in Africa reach even middle income status. Furthermore the countries which have ignored economic AID like Malaysia and India have seen rapid growth and are now emerging as the dominant economies of the 21st Century. Indeed the AID dependency model that is employed by the World Bank and IMF has fueled corruption as well as laid back attitudes in governance.
Dead Aid
Zambian economist Dambisa Moyo has spent the better part of this year canvassing around the worlds huge media networkings promoting her book “Dead Aid” which among other things compares and contrasts different economic models that have worked for the Tiger Economies and the failed policies in Africa.
I have posted some videos here for you to watch and please feel free to make your comments there in.
Rwandan President Paul Kagame and Kenya’s Deputy Prime Minister Uhuru Kenyatta also echoed this sentiments and urged African countries to reduce their dependence on Foreign Aid. Uhuru encouraged the Private sector especially social entreprenuers to work hand in hand with goverments to reduce this dependence. It is interesting African leaders are begining to read from the same page, which shows that dambisa’s book is timely. Watch these Videos below.
Please read this feature on Rwanda’s model of economic development by Jeff Chu. [Read Here]
ALJAAZERA INTERVIEW – RIZ KHAN
PAUL KAGAME & UHURU KENYATTA
BOOK REVIEW
The question of international aid to developing countries is one of the most controversial subjects in modern development literature. One simply needs to look at any local bookshop under the “current affairs” section and you are hit with many large and often time consuming volumes on the subject. So when I stumbled on DambisaMoyo’s book at my favourite bookshop (WaterstonesCharing Cross Station), I felt a mixture of delight and nervousness. Delight because here we have a Zambian academic weighing in on a subject that has been the preserve of self-appointed “development experts”. This should fill every Zambian with pride and admiration. God knows we have so few Zambian economists ready to engage such serious issues, let alone publish a book on it. That feeling quickly gave way to nervousness because with so much written on this topic by leading experts such as Easterly, Collier,Riddell and others, could Dead Aid really offer any fresh thinking on the subject? [Read More]
It is pretty amazing to discover that many of the worlds biggest Banks could get taken in by the exploits of one well connected individual. It just goes to show how massive greed has corrupted the financial system all over the world and the full effect is yet to be felt by Emerging Economies such as Kenya.
Mr Jimnah Mbaru One of Kenya’s leading Financial Gurus, Chairman of Dyer and Blair has sounded the alarm bells on the state of the Kenyan Economy. He said the country has already suffered negative economic growths in the last two consecutive quarters; a clear indicator the economy was in a recession. Mbaru said other factors leading to the contraction of the economy include a decline in farm outputs, high cost of food as well as high transport costs due to high oil prices, which have prevailed recently. The question is how related is this crisis to the going ons in the West and how can the major financial players like Mbaru prevent a free fall.
Being part of a Business Consultancy(www.cymapk.com) that advices banks on how to implement IT solutions to monitor and track funds i know for sure that any offshore or foreign investments have to be tightly regulated to provide a safeguard for local Banking Industries. This failure to regulate in the west is really surprising and many are left wondering how this situation arose. Only time will tell perhaps.
My Irish friend Gerry called this the chicken’s coming home to roost. An old English saying that suitably depicts the state of many banks today.
How can we regulate against this greed ? How can we legislate against Pyramid or Ponzi Schemes which are still by commision legal in Kenya?
Here is the list of the Banks that have been affected worldwide.
