G8 breaks aid promises to Africa; some economists call it good news

Five years ago today, in Gleneagles, Scotland, the leaders of the G8 nations made a dramatic promise to the people of Africa. Amidst a background of 200,000 marchers vowing to “make poverty history”, the G8 promised to double current aid to Africa, reaching a total of $25 billion in five years. Now that the timeline is up, and only $18 billion has been paid out, it has become clear that those earlier promises have been broken.

But another thing has happened in the past five years. The consensus that aid is always an unalloyed good has been shaken, and an increasing number of politicians, thinkers and development workers have been critical of the role of aid in developing nations? We speak with Paul Collier, British economist and author of “The Plundered Planet,” and Adama Gaye, Senegalese journalist and author of a book on African-Chinese relations. We take a look at the era of aid, and ask: is this the beginning of the end?