The White Man’s Burden: Why the West’s efforts to aid the rest have done so much ill and so little good. William Easterly, Oxford University Press (20

William Easterly has taken on the unenviable task of trying to get to the crux of the aid business but has produced a book full of conflict that fails to present a coherent explanation for the failures of the West to aid the ‘rest’. Repeatedly, Easterly excuses this lack, saying he is not presenting a panacea for the complex problems facing the developing world. Yet, the criticism he levels at the work of NGOs, governments, the UN and other international institutions, and the repeated statistic of $2.3 trillion spent on aid in the last half century, without the suggestion of anything more substantial than a switch from ‘planners’ to ‘searchers’ in their place, leaves a vast vacuum.

The ‘grand plan’ has dominated much of development thinking, despite the ridicule heaped on Soviet-style planned economies by the West; and Easterly is right to propose a radically alternative approach. The idea of ‘searchers’, people who adopt a more localised and innovative approach, suggests a more entrepreneurial line of attack in the battle against poverty; and is certainly an attractive proposition. Annoying analogies to Amazon’s ability to get the new Harry Potter to desperate fans aside, the notion of using market forces to encourage some blue sky thinking on ways to solve relatively simple problems, such as getting cheap bed nets to malarial areas, should be welcomed. Whether the radical changes necessary for Easterly’s favoured u-turn in development policy will be implemented remains to be seen, but as a starting point for a more comprehensive thesis, Easterly has thrown down an interesting gauntlet to the aid industry.

Joni Hillman