The Baringo Kid

Abstract

For more than 40 years, the international "aid industry" sent cash and field workers to Africa to boost "development"--to little avail. The end of the Cold War, the collapse of the Soviet Union, and a disastrous United Nations mission in Somalia that saw U.S. troops humiliated by local warlords, effectively ended the effort, and ended an era. This is an eyewitness account of life among the expatriate aid community shortly before the end, written by a journalist and former UN diplomat who saw the handwriting on the wall, but like many others was powerless to change the tide of history.