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Dambisa Moyo has given talks and written a book about how aid is harming Africa in a big way. I hightly recommend people check it out. Here's a short version of her talk: http://bigthink.com/ideas/21626

She does a good job of distinguishing between emergency aid (think Katrina or the Indian Ocean Tsunami) which she supports and permanent aid which she says supports corrupt governments and creates a culture of dependency.

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I believe she also drew a large distinction between NGOs and government, to make clear that she was not talking about NGOs.

Not entirely true. She has been as critical as many NGO interventions - "The types of aid that I’m talking about, I’m not talking about humanitarian or emergency aid, sort of the aid that goes for tsunami, for example. Nor am I talking about NGO or charitable aid which is relatively small beer. I myself sit on the board of a number of charities. But I think it’s important where charities are concerned to understand what they can and cannot do. So they can provide Band-Aid solutions. So we can send a girl to school for example, but they cannot deliver long-term economic development growth and growth or alleviate poverty on the level that we want to see across the continent." (http://www.kendallharmon.net/t19/index.php/t19/article/21352...)

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