The spat between Dambisa Moyo and Bill Gates and its relevance to Mrs
Kenyatta’s #BeyondZero
So Bill Gates claimed that
Dambisa Moyo’s book Dead Aid ‘promotes evil’ and that she knows little about aid. And Dr Moyo responded (in her blog) that
she got a PhD in economics and wide experience, how about Bill?
Reading through the articles
about this confrontation, I couldn’t help but relate with the ongoing debate in
Kenya regarding the appropriateness of the #BeyondZero campaign aiming to mobilise
donations to improve maternal health sponsored by Kenya’s 1st Lady
Mrs Kenyatta. There are those who laud the good lady for such a noble
initiative. Then there are those like my friend Rita Oyier who rightfully ask: ‘Why
should I pay taxes then run again” – alluding to the fact that if public
finances were better managed, we would not need marathons and donations to fund maternal
health.
The tragedy with the aid debate
remains the fact that there are a bunch of skeptics (the likes of Bill Easterly
and Dambisa Moyo) on one side and another lot of maniacs (the likes of Sachs
and Gates) on the other end shouting at the top of their voices and preventing
honest, factual debate on aid. We
know that neither of them is absolutely right.
Whilst aid has alleviated
suffering (especially in humanitarian crises), improved infrastructure and
promoted better institutions for governance and management of the public sector
in Sub-Sahara; it has also distracted governments from effective Domestic
Resource Mobilisation, economic diversification, or private sector development
that would provide sustainable solutions to the problems aid has dealt with.
But aid skeptics (like Dambisa Moyo)
fail to provide practical, logical, credible alternatives.
Dr Moyo benefited from aid in the
form of scholarship to earn her Havard education (like many Africans continue
to do). Bill Gates should know that countries like Burundi have up to 40% of their
budgets funded by Official Development Assistance not because they cannot
increase domestic revenues but more because aid has been made available.
So calling aid ‘dead’ (Dr Moyo)
or claiming that the book ‘Dead Aid’ promotes evil (Gates) does not help.
On the Kenyan example re -
#BeyondZero. I think the campaign is well intended but the First lady could use
her influence (being the person who goes to bed every night with the holder of
the policy pen), to institutionalize a stronger, more effective and sustainable
solution to financing maternal health in Kenya.
She could begin with sponsoring a bill to
increase and ring-fence maternal health funding in the annual budget.
What happens
when another 1st lady comes who doesn’t give a rat’s ass about
maternal health? Michael Jackson and a constellation of stars sang ‘We are the
world’ in 1995 to mobilise resources for Sudan. Is the problem solved today? Billions
of dollars was donated to support Haiti after the devastating earthquake, but
has the problem been addressed?
I am for
complementarity. Neither aid nor the market/growth focused approaches will succeed
in isolation. But if we complement prudent Public Finance Management with
effective development cooperation, we have a chance.
My 2pence!
