Why We Lie About Aid: Development and the Messy Politics of Change

Foreign aid is about charity. International development is about technical fixes. At least that is what we, as donor publics, are constantly told. The result is a highly dysfunctional aid system which mistakes short-term results for long-term transformation and gets attacked across the political spectrum, with the right claiming we spend too much, and the left that we don't spend enough.

The reality, as Yanguas argues in this highly provocative book, is that aid isn't – or at least shouldn't...