JCTR Bulletin 2nd Quarter 2009

The second quarter of 2009 was an interesting one but also an annoying one. Debates on the global financial crisis and development aid occupied most of the second quarter in Zambia. The quarter was interesting because of development debates, but annoying in that Government wasn’t very responsive to the challenges of strikes, misappropriation of public funds, and questions on the nature of the National Constitutional Conference (NCC). Actually a National Indaba (5-6 April) on the global financial crisis was organised by the Zambian Government. To most Zambians' surprise, there was no follow up and we are yet to see a report of the Indaba. Dambisa Moyo's book Dead Aid aroused a lot of debate with her thesis that aid has not brought any development to Africa but underdevelopment, corruption and dictatorial states and that aid should be stopped in five years. Dambisa even came to Zambia (part of her global marathon as a celebrity on her book) and discussed aid with some Zambian economists and others including our JCTR staffer Humphrey Mulemba. Despite the very good arguments of Humphrey that Dambisa's arguments were either faulty or misplaced in the aid debate, Dambisa arrogantly upheld her position and this was the same in all the places she global trotted where she closed the debate by not even seeing the good arguments of others. At the same time that Dambisa published her book, Peter Singer, a much more sober writer, published a book The Life you Can Save. In Singer’s book, a much sharper reason that people should be moved to give aid is given, namely that it is just human to help others when they are suffering or "drowning." By just giving a small percentage of one's earnings (5%), we could actually end world poverty.