Zambian Scholar Chipasha Luchembe on Dambisa Moyo Best Selling Book Dead Aid – interview

Dr. Dambisa Moyo:
Dead Aid - Why aid is not working for Africa
There is a better way for Africa

She makes it clear at the outset what kind of aid she means. What she means is "systemic aid", the vast sums regularly transferred from government to government, or via institutions such as the World Bank.".

What are the reasons why aid is not working for Africa and is there a better way for Africa, are only few questions I put to Zambian scholar Dr. Chipasha Luchembe.

Dr. Chipasha Luchembe is a Research Associate in the Department of History at the University of California , Los Angeles [ UCLA ] and also Chairman of AIMS, a private company whose strategic goal is to speed up the flow of trade and investment between Africa and America.

Dr. Chipasha Luchembe welcome to the interview

Q: Here is a book on its way to become a global bestseller, why all this talk and excitement?
Chipasha: I think part of the reason is the timing of the book which has reopened and reignited the debate on development in Africa that had intensified during the Cold War period up to the late 1980s but subsided somewhat thereafter. Now that both Socialism and Capitalism as models of development have gone through a period of severe crises and breakdown in the case of Socialism in the former Soviet Union or the current near-breakdown of Capitalism the time is right to restart asking question of alternative development model for Africa as well as other parts of the world.

Dr Dambisa Moyo's book has provided the opportunity to revisit the old debate. Moreover Africa has now been politically independent for almost half a century which is sufficient time for a reassessment of the development that has taken place. [

Q: Here is a brilliant young women – and attractive too – a Zambian economist, virtually stepping out of Africa and saying to rethink the whole concepts of aid for Africa. Why aid it not working for Africa?
Chipasha: Dependency on aid as a driver of development can not work anywhere including Africa. Aid can only work if it fits into and supports locally-driven development initiatives.

My view is that there is all too often a disconnect between the foreign aid and the local drivers.

Q: The book feels - almost - like a storm, leaving a changed landscape behind. Is it safe to say that this book will force to shift direction of aid for Africa – and which direction?
Chipasha: I think it will be the other way around. The great impact will be on the strategic use of aid by a new generation of leadership in African countries in their development planning/goals.

Q: It is being said that the humanities greatest challenge is the meaning of 21st century and young people are the generation responsible for surviving the transitions – their actions could set the stage for a greater civilization or terminate civilization. In terms of contribution - where would you place Dr. Damisa Moyo book?
Chipasha: The generation of Dr Dambisa Moyo may mark the end of an era from the struggle for political independence to the struggle for economic development and her book is symbolic of this transition.

Q: You said "as the Chinese say we are living in interesting times courtesy of Dambisa". Can you elaborate - which are those interesting times?
Chipasha: Clearly we are witnessing the gradual shift from a unipolar world with the USA as a single superpower to a multipolar world in which Europe, Asia become central players joined by emerging Latin America and Africa.

How such a shift will be negotiated is what I think the Chinese saying helps us to get.

Q: You had an advance copy of Dambisa Moyo book. Which important questions are here being raised, which solutions and other suggestions are being proposed?
Chipasha: Her main argument is that the easy money from foreign aid has undermined African governance and that there are better alternatives available on the private financial markets and that though painful cutting off foreign aid will spur much needed accountability and innovation.

Q: In Zambia forum you said that you are very proud to see this generations of Zambians come of age and break through on the international stage. What is special about this generation?
Chipasha: Partly because this is the generation that may redeem my own generation which I think could have done better given the great potential we inherited at Independence.

There is much blame to pass around for this failure and mine is that the generation that led the struggle for political independence held on to political power too long [1964- 1990] and even within that generation there was no experience of transfer of power from one hand to the other hand and this in my opinion created a political "experience vacuum" too difficult to fill.

The Late President Levy P Mwanawasa which was my peer tried his best to slow down the economic decline and start some mild recovery but just imagine what would have happened to Zambia if such leadership was in place much earlier when it was needed?

That is why I think that Dr Moyo's generation is special because it is unbound by the early postcolonial legacy and stand a good chance to break with the past and redeem us all , perhaps!

Q: Do you see yourself as its mentor and are we in for more surprises in which?
Chipasha: No I do not see myself as a mentor to this new generation but rather as its shadow - always there - except when there is full sunlight ! Her central argument of cutting or phasing out aid is bold but quiet simplistic or mechanical.

There is nothing inherently wrong with aid but only in the way it is has been used by post-colonial leadership which Dr Moyo's generation is now positioned to replace.

Q: A reviewer remarked that Dambisa is deeply wounded by the lack of development in her native Zambia. Can you enlighten us this respect?
Chipasha: Since I am the generation of Dr Moyo's father - whom I know very well - I can only give a personal recollections to show how "deeply wounded" this generation has been for the past three decades. During the first decade of post colonial Zambia 1964-1974 the Zambian currency - Kwacha - was more than double the value of the American dollar and one and half times that of the British pound. By 1980 it was at almost at par with the Dollar and Pound and there after it went into steep decline of 6000.00 Kwacha to $1.00 current. As a Graduate student at UCLA in 1974 I was getting from Zambia some 800 Kwacha per month which converted into almost $2, 000.00 per month and that was a lot of money!

Born into such heritage Dr Moyo's generation have witnessed that all disappear before their eyes to be replaced by sever degradation and despair which the AIDS/HIV made even worse. It has been a catastrophic disaster of Biblical proportions which has scarred this – her - generation. If one experience being born into poverty but another being born into relieve wealth and losing it all. That is what those would are about in my view.

Q: Another reviewer sums up about Dambisa as the "rebel with a cause", which rebellion and which cause?
Chipasha: I take this to mean her rebellion against both the national recipient and international promoters of aid and her cause being that of reorientation away from
Western Aid to the Eastern markets.

Q: In a book entitled "Poverty: the Wealth of the People" an African writer draws a distinction between poverty as subsistence, and misery as deprivation. He says that it is useful to separate a cultural conception of simple, sustainable living as poverty from the materials experience of poverty as result of dispossession and deprivations. What then is a better way for Africa?
Chipasha: There is not other way other than people getting organized into grassroots movement which will empower them through their own representatives to get into the seat of locally-driven development with those outside only playing a supportive role.

This is the opposite of dispossession and deprivation. I am sure it will not only make the experience of poverty" livable culturally - but will diminish it considerably"

Q: Another reviewer commented on Dambisa "unlucky timing". Don`t you think that the time is actually in her favor and that the book is a timely signal to Africa to stand on its own feed and become self-sufficient?
Chipasha: What this reviewer has in mind regarding the "unlucky timing" refers to the current global financial crisis in which funds from private sources has dried up and that therefore the only recourse for countries like Zambia is go back to the same foreign aid that Dr Moyo is against.

Q: What then are the alternatives to get the development going in Zambia, Africa, and developing world?
Chipasha: The alternatives are already there to adopt and adjust to suit the unique conditions in Zambia and Africa. For example for the first time in some 500 years Latin America in now asserting its own independent economic development and what is taking place there is of great significance to other developing countries and regions.

There is a political and economic revolution going on in Latin America which has gone unnoticed in the Western media especially the USA.

It is a revolution driven movement from the grassroots!

Q: As far as the future policy options, the Guardian newspaper recently run an interesting article under title "It should be the environment and the economy, stupid"? What is your opinion?
Chipasha: The Western-dominated world development of the past 500 years has many outcomes and the degradation of the environment has been one of them. It follows that Zambia and Africa should adopt developmental policies that are environmentally sustainable.

This also means that blindly following the Western model is not a viable option.

Q: For whom is the book of particular interest
Chipasha: To students of and practitioners of African development including many others who want to help Africa stand on it own feet/philanthropists.

Q: By the end of this month April 2009 you will expect Dambisa during the Annual LA Book Fair, in Southern California. What are you going to tell her? Tell us more about the Great Season for Zambian women?
Chipasha: I will tell her not to throw the baby with the bathwater! That there should always be a delicate balance between theory and practice and perhaps "deeply wounded" as she has been - she has mechanically allowed the "practice" to get the upper hand at the expense of balancing it with correct theory.

Foreign aid ought to be used to help us to "sharpen our axe" so that we can do the work of cutting the trees and building our own home ourselves. The problem is that we have not been sharpening our axe and we have even abandoned our axe!

Meeting her will also be a celebration the blooming and flowering of the Zambian women in this Spring Season. The former First Lady of Zambia Mrs. Maureen K Mwanawasa is also going to be in California to receive a well-deserved Honorary Doctorate from Pepperdine University.

Mrs. Mwanawasa is sometimes referred to as the "Iron Lady" and or "Hillary Clinton" of Zambia and has the potential in her own right of one day becoming the first woman President of Zambia. The Ambassador of Zambia to the USA is also a woman by the name of Dr Inonge Mbikushita Lewanika who also contested for the position of President of the African Union during the last election but lost narrowly.

It is indeed a Great Season for Zambian women.

Q: Final thoughts, any interesting undertakings you wish to share..?
Chipasha: We are now truly in an interdependent networked global world and going it alone is not a viable option. We have to think globally and act locally. It does not make sense for Zambia and Africa to be rigidly integrated into faraway Europe and America when it is not integrated within Africa locally and regionally and nearby Near East and rest of Asia.

Ultimately it will be a balanced global integration that will work for all.

Thank you.

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