Dead Aid

What if the very thing meant to end poverty has helped sustain it? Dambisa Moyo’s work turns a familiar moral instinct on its head, asking whether decades of aid have done less to build economies than to entrench fragile states and soften the pressures that force reform. The short follows the rise of aid as a central pillar of development policy, then sets it against a record of weak growth, distorted markets, and governments more attuned to donors than to citizens. In its place, it outlines a harder path shaped by investment, trade, and financial discipline. The result is a clear argument: prosperity comes not from transfers, but from systems that demand performance and reward it.