Achebe describes Africa at that time as a house that the white man built and then said he was going to leave. He says that the smart, the lucky, but not always the best, got there first, rushed into the house and slammed the door, and the rest have been left out in the rain. A lot of the blame for Africa's failure can be placed on its elites who take their money out of the country. They live like exceedingly rich Europeans or Americans with flashy cars and huge houses. Their children all go to British schools and British or American universities and they have no confidence in Africa. They don't want anything to do with it. In fact, when you drink with them, you realise that they absolutely despise other Africans, especially the poor. They have no interest in developing Africa. They are doing extremely well, as they are living off aid or whatever their income is, and the idea of bringing education or health to their population doesn't interest them in the slightest. They are often the people that Western business deals with and Western governments deal with. They are the people getting the aid, the political support, even the military support and they are being kept in power.

If Western countries wanted to help they could start by stopping the corruption money flowing back into Britain, as we saw in the case of the two huge Kenyan thefts. With the Goldenberg scandal, it ended up being nearly $4 billion shipped out of the country, reducing Kenya's growth rate from 4.5 per cent to less than one per cent. It all ended up in the City of London through secret offshore accounts. The present government's inquiry has implicated the former President Daniel arap Moi and his family and cronies. If we want to help Africa we have to say to its leaders: "What are you doing with all this money? Where did you get it? You've stolen it." Those are the sort of things that we can help with. With people like Moi in power, the idea that you can transform a country with aid is preposterous.

DJ: Dambisa, you actually describe Africa as a drug addict who has been addicted to aid and now has to be weaned off it. How do you do that?

DM: My preference is to do it cold turkey, as opposed to trying to drag it out. It's been 60 years - it's a great disaster and shame that many Asian countries were poorer than African countries in the 1970s and today they're vying for top spots in the world economy. Where has Africa been? What's happening? Some of the comments that Richard made are very interesting. However, I believe that if we focus on colonialism and tribalism then we're never going to move on. The reality is, yes, there are some aspects of colonialism that didn't work, there were boundaries that were misplaced, there's a whole host of things that colonialism did that have not been great for Africa. However, it happened. It's a reality. India was also colonised, there are other colonies that have broken those mental shackles.