This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Monday, April 6, 2009.

I'm Caleb Brown.

As growth rates in African countries continue to decline as poverty rates rise.

Dembeza Moyo concludes that government to government aid is and has been for a long time a bitter

failure.

She argues in her new book, Dead Aid, that there is a better way for Africa.

We spoke before a Cato Book Forum held Friday.

The broad assumption that giving money for free is the fundamental aspects of development hasn't changed.

But the details have changed for sure.

I mean in the 1960s aid was going towards infrastructure, 1970s

towards poverty, 1980s towards structure adjustment, 1990s towards democracy

and governance, so on and so forth. But you know the fundamental point is that it's all couched in this

system that introduces negative incentives into a society so governments can take the money and divert it in the wrong direction.

It's a system that introduces inflation and debt burdens and actually disenfranchises African.

So in that sense, you're absolutely right.

There's been very little that has changed,

but the manner in which it's been presented

has certainly evolved over the past 60 years.

The way that the public in the United States

thinks about aid, especially through programs

that have popularized giving the one campaign, for example, they popularize methods of giving aid that have failed?

Well, I think these type of,

...