An interview with the author of this new polemic against official aid had made me look forward to reading it. I personally incline strongly towards scepticism about proposals for additional aid spending, whether of the Collier or Easterly flavours, rather than the Jeff Sachs side of the debate. Surely there have been so many failed 'silver bullet' approaches to development that we have every reason to doubt the latest one? Ms Moyo is one of a number of African intellectuals who have begun to criticise the aid industry. Another powerful recent example was the BBC Panorama by Sorious Samura. The parts of the development economics literature which seem most interesting are those addressing microeconomic issues, such as the papers on policy experiments by Esther Duflo and Abhijit Banerjee (there's a useful survey of the experimental approach on Prof Banerjee's website). Besides, it is always a joy to come across a female economist getting some deserved attention and offering a role model to all the young women students who are on the verge of being discouraged from continuing in economics.

However, Dambisa Moyo's book was a bit disappointing. I guess it's because this is meant to reach the popular market, all those who bought Prof Sach's The End of Poverty. After all, they have the same publisher, Penguin. This target audience means Ms Moyo is long on rants and light on the presentation of evidence. It is all very familiar material. Even agreeing with many of her rants, I think this makes Dead Aid much less rewarding for an economist than Paul Collier's The Bottom Billion, on which she draws quite heavily. Yet it is a mistake to believe that the anti-capitalism crowd which loves Jeff Sachs is sufficiently open minded to buy a book making the opposite argument. After many years writing, it's very clear to me that books (alone) don't change minds. On the contrary, people read books to have their pre-existing views confirmed.

There is one issue Ms Moyo draws attention to which other books making the same arguments have avoided, at least ever since Peter Bauer was bold enough to call attention to it. That is the self-interest of the official aid and NGO community in seeing the flow of money continue. Ms Moyo estimates that at least half a million people have livelihoods depending on the giving and spending of official aid, and as she writes (p54): “The incentives built into the development organizations perpetuate the cycle of lending ot even the most corrupt countries.”

I also like her proposed solution: a phone call to all recipient governments in Africa giving them five years' notice of the aid tap turning off. Given the current economic and fiscal crisis in the western donor economies, perhaps they would be lucky to get any notice at all.