I have been trying to steer clear of the latest book offering from Dambisa Moyo Winner Take All. This recent review in the Daily Telegraph rather echoes what we have come to expect from Moyo :
This Zambian economist became famous with Dead Aid, a trenchant attack on the development industry. In Winner Take All, she has produced a flawed and frustrating book, simplistic, poorly written, careless with facts and largely devoid of originality. This latter point is most telling. There is no point approaching a subject of this importance unless you are willing to do some original reporting. Aside from one paragraph on page 90, which describes a scene at an unnamed international conference, nothing in Winner Take All suggests that Moyo has travelled anywhere, seen anything for herself, or interviewed anyone. Instead, this book clearly owes much to Google: the author relies entirely on reports downloaded from the United Nations and sundry think tanks......
Moyo appears to have maintained the poor analytical form in a rather strange new article in the New York Times on China and Africa relations. Aside from its poor arguments, what I found rather strange is that it reads like a point for point silent refutation of the points we raised in the BBC Africa Magazine piece in April. The extended version of that article was published as a monthly essay - China's New Colonialism in Africa. Then there's the bizarre perpetuated belief that "aid" only comes from the West. Do we really need to debate such basic points? China provides lots of aid to Africa, but in Moyo's ...
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