Africa: Dead Aid and the return of neoliberalism

Dambisa Moyo’s 2009 book Dead Aid sought to revive the neoliberal prescriptions for Africa’s development that were promoted by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund during the 1980s and 1990s. This article argues that implementing such prescriptions would repeat the catastrophic errors of Africa’s two ‘lost decades’ and that the real alternative to aid dependency lies not in the free market but in development that is genuinely accountable to local communities.