Enjoy Aid And Other Dirty Business: How Good Intentions Have Failed The World's Poor Constructed By Giles Bolton In PDF

is eye opening! Written by a guy who worked for the British Government in Rwanda and so knows both sides of the story, It not only tells what's going wrong basically that those who know what's going wrong have no power and those with the power i, e. us! don't know what's going wrong and in the majority don't care!

One of Africa's problems is that it has no terrorists and just gets on and quietly dies without causing us too much hardship.
It ruins our breakfasts occasionally to see distressing photos in the newspapers, but then we can turn over and get on with the REAL problems in our lives, like, well like what Like the problems they don't get in Africa.
Protecting property, helping kids with the homework for that the kids have to have survived and be in school unlikely!

As a welcome change he goes on to tell what we can actually do in practical terms so I didn't feel like slashing my wrists through sheer impotence at knowing far too much without the power to change it! Well worth a few hours of anyone's time, particularly if they're of the opinion that change is vital.

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Perspective Shift:Aid and Other Dirty Business:An Insider Reveals How Good Intentions Have Failed the World's Poor deserves more attention than I will give it.
The only appropriate amount of credit to give this is to read it, and that is mandatory, Giles Botton gives a distressing account of the troubles in Africa by presenting you, yes, you!, with your own African country for the duration of the book.
Your country, Uzima, is blessed with natural resources and incoming tax revenues beyond the dreams of the president of, say, Uganda,

but still squarely in the middle of subSaharan African economies.
Your liabilities are massive, and you lack the most basic infrastructure, As well, you lack an educated workforce from which to hire more government functionaries to meet with allor so governments and and NGOs who want to bestow aid upon you.
Compounding that, many governments and NGOs only commit to project aid, rather than direct assistance, The USA only invests in project aid and spends a flippingof aid money on consultants, Beyond that, our food aid resembles a combination of dumping agriculture surplus and propping up our wimpy shipping sector, Meanwhile, the US and Eurozone subsidize their own farm products to a point where no small farmer in the Ivory Coast can possibly break into the international market.
Add unfunded Western promises and the new Chinese development with strings and then fix your country, Mr, President.

sitelink blogspot. com/ Makes me want to read more and do more, It may have over simplified the way international aid works but then we spend so much time complicating everything and ending up not taking any action at all.
brilliant literature of how the west failed Africa and why poverty there never ends A very good and userfriendly book on aid politics, The examples and the anecdotes, backed up by solid research are very useful for any concerned citizen who wants to see a better world and is ready to play his/her part.
Highly recommended for development practitioners and responsible citizens, "Written by a guy who worked for the British Government in Rwanda and so knows both sides of the story"

someone mentioned "aid amp dirty business" by the same author Excellent read on AID and its impact in Africa.

In depth analysis on how decisions taken by world powers to protect themselves and their markets have unintended negative consequences to others around the world.

Definitely a recommended read for anyone interested in foreign policy, trade and Non Governmental work A useful book on the issues and challenges of international aid.
Bolton covers most issues in 'broad strokes' but his analysis and suggestions are clear, I read this too late for the statistics to be of use and I would love to see how the optimism and some of the pessimism contained here fromhas modified in the intervening ten years.
I'll certainly 'check up' on Bolton's recent work to see whether his view has changed, I learned a lot from this book, which takes an honest look at international aid and why it just isn't working, The author focuses on what he knows, Africa, and provides amazing insight into where programs fall short and what money can really do, The consequences are international. Read the part about American government subsidizing their farmers who are then and thus able to sell their products in countries including Africa cheaper than African products.
When Africa can't buy local, you have a corrupt system! Not corrupt as in conspiracy, corrupt as in not able to function as intended, So many interesting dynamics and ramifications! Interesting insight into how aid actually works and how trade and aid can be improved, I wonder how much has changed since this book was originally writtenyears ago
I thought there was some repetition in the later chapters but it took a difficult subject and made it easy to understand.
I also found the solutions suggested at the end quite empowering, This was written by a friend so I am biased but it gives a great insight into how taxpayers' money is being wasted and how the problem of poor countries is so much bigger than we think.
If you are interested in the world of aid, then read this book! Boltons book makes the argument that the lack of development in the Global South and particularly Africa has something to do with the poor quality of Aid, the Aid industry and the behaviour of richer governments eg.
tariffs. There is, no doubt, much in this analysis which makes it so sad that the analysis throughout this book is so poor, Instead of offering a wellresearched counter proposition much of the book reads as a whiny and dogmatic complaint,

The writing is easily accessible and the books ability to summarise complex concepts relatively well is definitely a plus, However, it is often alongside attempts at humour which fall very flat and betray a Boltons strange ideas of what the public really think, For example, when discussing what sustainability means in relations to international development programming, he talks about the word invoking images of sandal wearing development workers.
I was half expecting to read falafel eating lefties next to it, This has not aged well and I think is indicative of a wider naivete in Boltons writing which manifests throughout and makes him quite a bad person to write a book of such importance.


Equally, he approaches the work of organisations like the World Bank and IMF with an apologism which is disingenuous to the role played by these organisations in the destabilising of African economies and the dragging of massive populations into poverty.
The effects of which are still being felt across the continent to this day, In contrast to his painting of development workers as leftytypes I think he exposes that the development sector in the modern day operates with a deep neoliberalism.
This is evident in his own writing where he favours a governancebased view on corruption advocated for by people such as sitelinkPaul Collier, rather than a more in depth understanding of the relationship between corruption and global supply chains identified by sitelinkTom Burgis, sitelinkNicholas Shaxson, sitelinkWilliam Reno, and sitelinkJeanFrançois Bayart.
His apologism for corporations further contributes to this, He writes that the idea that multinational corporation MNC actively try to shaft the poor has never been credible, This argument, briefly made, is not credible, MNCs union breaking activities, involvement in corruptions, use of slave labour and participations in civil wars are not conspiracy theories but real occurrences across the continent.
One just needs to look at how blood diamonds ended up getting into the global market to see MNCs callous disregard for African lives, I would say the evidence of MNCs shafting the poor in Africa is one of the most credible things that could be said about the relationship.


A real issue for me in this book is the bibliography, While there is a more comprehensive notes section a book of this length, that makes the claims it does should have a detailed and long bibliography.
Instead, the bibliography lists aboutbooks, many of which I have read and I struggle to see their relevance to this book, For example, sitelinkGil Courtemanches sitelinkA Sunday at the Pool in Kigali is a excellent novel which details the experience of a Canadian journalist during the Rwandan genocide.
He also cites sitelinkPhilip Gourevitchs sitelinkWe Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families another book that looks at the Rwandan genocide from the perspective of a journalist.
Neither is an authoritative account of how the genocide came to happen and the aftermath of the genocide nor are they particularly relevant to the core argument of the book so their inclusion in the strange bibliography is a bit of an anathema.
Furthermore, in the rudimentary bibliography sitelinkRobert Guests sitelinkThe Shackled Continent: Africa's Past, Present and Future, Robert Guest gets a mention, A more appropriate book in the sense it deals with African political economy, but a flawed book in the sense it misquotes many authors throughout, including sitelinkGérard Prunier's sitelinkThe Rwanda Crisis: History of a Genocide which would have been a much more appropriate book to cite on the Rwandan genocide even with it's flaws, and is very much a book written as an ideological manifesto rather than a good faith piece of research.
I could go on about the strangeness of the book selection I the bibliography but I think the point has effectively been made,

This book is one of the problems with international development which is a failure to properly draw from academic research, a failure to check latent ideology and a strange anecdotal style which belays the complexity of the situations it seeks to address.
I would recommend sitelinkJason Hickel's sitelinkThe Divide: A Brief Guide to Global Inequality and its Solutions as a much better book to understand the political economy of international development's failures.
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