April 2, 2009 | Read Time: 1 minute
The ONE Campaign, an antipoverty advocacy group, is debating a leading critic of international aid.
On his Aid Watch blog, William Easterly, a professor of economics at New York University, derides ONE for asking some “high-profile Africans” to discuss what they think of Dead Aid, a new book that heavily criticizes Western government efforts to help Africa.
(For more about the book, visit the the Web site of the author, Dambisa Moyo.)
Mr. Easterly says that ONE should challenge Ms. Moyo’s ideas, but not recruit others to do so. By “rounding up some Africans who happen to disagree with Zambian-born Moyo doesn’t alter the quality of her proposals, which deserve to be debated on their own merits,” he writes.
In a response on Aid Watch, Edith Jibunoh, Africa outreach manager for ONE, writes that Mr. Easterly’s “post suggesting ONE is trying to ‘discredit’ and ‘misrepresent’ Ms. Moyo is untrue and not particularly constructive.”
She says that ONE contacted some Africans it works with as an attempt to expand the discussion about Dead Aid.
As for directly debating Ms. Moyo, Ms. Jibunoh points to a page on ONE’s Web site that questions her book’s major statements.
What do you think of Dead Aid?
