Dambisa Moyo

Dambisa Moyo

Dambisa Moyo was born (1969) and raised in Lusaka, Zambia. She is a bestselling author and international economist who comments on the macroeconomy and global affairs.

Moyo completed a PhD in Economics at Oxford University, where her dissertation focused on “Why Is It That Some Countries Save And Others Not?”. She holds a Masters degree in Public Administration from Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. She completed an undergraduate degree in Chemistry and an MBA in Finance at the American University in Washington D.C. She worked for the World Bank as a Consultant and at Goldman Sachs where she worked in the debt capital markets and as an economist in the global macroeconomics team.

In 2009 Ms. Moyo was named by Time Magazine as one of the “100 Most Influential People in the World”, and was nominated to the World Economic Forum’s Young Global Leaders Forum. Her writing regularly appears in economic and finance-related publications such as the Financial Times, the Economist Magazine and the Wall Street Journal.

Ms Dambisa has a financial services background, having worked for both Goldman Sachs and the World Bank. She worked for the World Bank in the Europe and Central Asia and Africa Departments from 1993 to 1995 before going on to embark on her PhD. She then joined Goldman Sachs, where she worked for eight years until November 2008 in the debt capital markets, hedge funds coverage and global macroeconomics teams. Since then she has been writing and lecturing. Moyo also serves as a non-executive director on the boards of several multinational companies including Barclays Bank, SABMiller, Lundin Petroleum and Barrick Gold. She is a regular contributor to financial journals such as the Economist and Financial Times and has appeared as a guest on networks such as CBC, CNN, CNBC, BBC and Fox Business. She is a Patron of Absolute Return for Kids (ARK), a hedge fund supported children’s charity, and serves on the Board of directors of Room to Read, a non-profit that provides educational opportunities to local communities in the developing world.

Moyo has argued in various media, and specifically in her first book, Dead Aid: Why Aid is Not Working and How There is a Better Way for Africa, that international aid should gradually be phased out as it cripples developing country economies by fueling corruption and dependency. In a 2009 interview with the New York Times, when asked what she thought has held back Africans, Moyo said:

“I believe it’s largely aid. You get the corruption — historically, leaders have stolen the money without penalty — and you get the dependency, which kills entrepreneurship. You also disenfranchise African citizens, because the government is beholden to foreign donors and not accountable to its people.”

In her second book, How the West Was Lost: Fifty Years of Economic Folly and the Stark Choices Ahead, Moyo describes how shortsighted policies have set the West on a path of decline. She discusses how the fundamentals of economic growth: capital, labor, and technology have been misallocated because of bad incentives. Moyo argues that the scales of economic power will soon tip in favor of emerging economies if swift and severe corrective action isn’t taken by the West.

According to Forbes Magazine, Moyo’s next book, Winner Take All: China’s Rush for Resources and What it Means for the Rest of the World, is scheduled for publication in January 2012

Sources: Wikipedia, Author’s Website, Forbes, New York Times and others

Author’s Website: www.dambisamoyo.com

Books by Dambisa Moyo

• Dead Aid: Why Aid Is Not Working and How There is Another Way for Africa
• How the West Was Lost: Fifty Years of Economic Folly – And the Stark Choices that Lie Ahead
• Winner Take All: China’s Race for Resources and What It Means for the World