As a critical development worker myself, I was really looking forward reading this book. But what a disappointment! Most of the information is already well known by most of the people unless you have spent the last 20 years in a cave.
The main reasons of my disappointment are:
1: The author only focuses on direct governmental aid. You don't need this book, neither a PhD to understand that this type of aid is not working and encourages corruption of the regimes helped.
I had hoped that the author would have given me a bright vision of the help of all kind of NGO's. A lot of money is going down the drain there as well, but there are also some prosperous NGO initiatives. But there's no answer how to reorganize the NGO work, in order to really help the people who needs it. Now, most projects are only helping the 'elite' in Africa, who really don t need help
2 The comparison with China. China did develop the last decade, most African countries didn't. One argument I really miss here is the difference in attitude towards labor. The Chinese are way ahead in this compared to European countries and light-years ahead of Africa. Chinese are willing to work very hard to get themselves out of the problems, most Africans don't.
Because of this difference in attitude towards labor, Chinese employers in Africa are rather unpopular among their Africans employees.
3 The author has no reflection on her own career. Consider this: when she was born as a white male from, let's say, Austria, would she have had the same career opportunities? Probably the availability development budgets (and the social eagerness of employing higher educated African women on high positions) made it possible for her to study abroad and having the career she is having.
To be honest, if this book was written by this white, Austrian, male, I don't even think any publisher would have published it. Therefore her writing style is to poor. It's not a page-turner at all, except for the pages with all kind of background information which easily can be skipped.