Researcher and author Michael Cohen today added his voice to reviews of the book “Dead Aid” by Dambisa Moyo. Writing in “World Politics Review,” Cohen says there are many holes in Moyo’s argument, including undocumented statistics and too much faith in Chinese involvement in Africa. But Cohen says that perhaps Moyo’s biggest mistake is that she fails to differentiate between different types of aid, instead lumping all types of aid together in her criticisms.

Moyo, Cohen writes, characterizes all aid as coming in the form of direct cash to governments, ignoring perhaps the most prominent form of aid, especially in recent years, which is health and humanitarian aid, such as medicine, equipment support and health infrastructure.

Perhaps Moyo’s greatest sin is not differentiating between types of aid. Only a few years ago, Botswana was so ravaged by HIV-AIDS that it’s president spoke of possible national “extinction.” Ultimately, outside assistance from the United States, the United Nations, the Gates Foundation and the drug company Merck helped save Botswana from this fate. The Botswana aid came in the form of money and, more importantly, technical assistance, which can often be more effective than resource flows in producing positive development outcomes. Yet, in Moyo’s formulation there is only one type of aid — money, usually bilateral in origin — and it’s bad. Moyo argues that African countries — not the West — should be tackling the AIDS crisis, but ignores the fact that her best example of a successful African economy (Botswana) was unable to do just that.

Cohen concludes that while it is critical that we debate how aid can be effectively and efficiently delivered to reach poor Africans, Moyo’s argument is dangerous and would have the opposite effect that she is aiming for…

In an era of fiscal belt-tightening, this debate is more crucial than ever. That Moyo wants to help her native continent is not in dispute. But the naïve solutions she advocates in “Dead Aid” would have the exact opposite effect, and risk emboldening those who argue for turning off the aid tap for reasons that have nothing to do with altruistic support for African countries.

Moyo would have been better off writing a book that gets to the heart of the problems facing the African continent, instead of offering a bogeyman (aid) and remedy (going cold turkey) that would only consign another generation of Africans to grinding hardship.

-Steve Wilson