Dambisa Moyo Quotes

A constant stream of 'free' money is a perfect way to keep an inefficient or simply bad government in power. As aid flows in, there is nothing more for the government to do - it doesn't need to raise taxes, and as long as it pays the army, it doesn't have to take account of its disgruntled citizens.

The World Bank can only survive if it's spending money.

I'll make a general comment about this whole dependence on 'celebrities.' I object to this situation as it is right now, where they have inadvertently or manipulatively become the spokespeople for the African continent.

A nascent economy needs a transparent and accountable government and an efficient civil service to help meet social needs. Its people need jobs and a belief in their country's future. A surfeit of aid has been shown to be unable to help achieve these goals.

The insidious aid culture has left African countries more debt-laden, more inflation-prone, more vulnerable to the vagaries of the currency markets and more unattractive to higher-quality investment.

If I go to Singapore, I have friends there. If they came to Zambia, they'd feel the same way. I've made connections, and I have friends in many, many countries.

We've reached a very low-level equilibrium where it's not clear whose interest it is in to develop Africa ... It's not in the interest of those in the aid industry to develop Africa because then there'd be no more industry and 500,000 people would lose their jobs. The only people whose interest it is in is Africans, but they have no voice.

'Dead Aid' is about the inefficacy and the limitations of large-scale aid programs in creating economic growth and reducing poverty in Africa.

If you think about the last 50 years, Africa's proximity and historical context has absolutely been with Europe and the United States, but their approach in dealing with the economic challenges that Africa faces in particular has been one of handing out aid, not developing economies, not building a long term relationship around agriculture and so on.

The fact that Brazil and Chile now has China as their largest trading partner means the Monroe Doctrine is certainly something of the past.

This is a great continent. I went to primary school on this continent, secondary school, university. I've worked on this continent, and I think that it's a great disservice that, for whatever reason, people have usurped an imagery of Africa that is absolutely incorrect.

The western mindset erroneously equates a political system of multi-party democracy with high-quality institutions ... the two are not synonymous.

I would say issues around human rights - either you're going to take a hard stance, or you're not. You can't borrow money from China the way the U.S. has done and then turn around and say, 'But you've got a human-rights problem.' You can't be half pregnant.

I don't think my background in Zambia has really affected my lens because my classical training has been Western-style. But it's fantastically fortuitous to have been born African because I don't feel I have a vested interest to the U.S. or China or wherever.

The fact that China has about seven percent arable land, means that she's always going to be looking for places that have more arable lands to finance or to provide food stuffs.

I am fortunate: my parents told me the world was my oyster, when they could have said I wouldn't make it for a lot of reasons - rural, girl, small African country. So, no regrets.

I went into the sciences very early on, but to me, economics pervades so much more of our lives and our existence.

There are tons of examples of U.K. and European mistakes. A classic one is pensions. That's obviously not an America-specific thing. The British and European economies are suffering under the weight of what is to come. The next great Ponzi scheme after Madoff is probably pensions.

Ask most people who live in a home and have a mortgage on it whether they own their own home and the answer is almost guaranteed to be a resounding 'yes'. Yet it's the wrong answer. Technically speaking, until they have paid the mortgage off, they don't own it. Herein lies the difference between reality and illusion, between ownership and control. This confusion lies not only at the individual level, but also at the heart of government thinking.

The notion that aid can alleviate systemic poverty, and has done so, is a myth. Millions in Africa are poorer today because of aid; misery and poverty have not ended but increased. Aid has been, and continues to be, an unmitigated political, economic, and humanitarian disaster for most parts of the developing world.

My mother is chairman of a bank called the Indo-Zambia Bank. It's a joint venture between Zambia and India. My father runs Integrity Foundation, an anticorruption organization.

I wish we questioned the aid model as much as we are questioning the capitalism model. Sometimes the most generous thing you can do is just say no.

I have dedicated many years to economic study, up to the Ph.D. level, to analyze and understand the inherent weaknesses of aid and why aid policies have consistently failed to deliver on economic growth and poverty alleviation.

I was born and raised in Zambia in 1969. At the time of my birth, blacks were not issued birth certificates, and that law only changed in 1973.

Too many African countries have already hit rock-bottom - ungoverned, poverty-stricken, and lagging further and further behind the rest of the world each day; there is nowhere further to go down.