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Bringing in the harvest

An African food-production triumph raises questions about the purpose and value of Western aid

The big idea of a development push in Africa, to be part-financed by Western aid, has been propagated by rock stars and given intellectual credibility by United States' economist Jeffrey Sachs. It is now losing ground to an older, more hard-headed questioning of the motives and mixed effect of foreign projects in Africa. A new book by Christian Aid's Jonathan Glennie(1) suggests that more money may not be the answer to Africa's chronic poverty and, in fact, it may be responsible for some of it....

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Bringing in the harvest

An African food-production triumph raises questions about the purpose and value of Western aid

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