Another Fine Mess

Is the West to blame for failing Uganda?

In this powerful story of Uganda and its war-torn neighbors in eastern and central Africa, journalist Helen Epstein chronicles how America's naïve dealings with African strongmen and single-minded focus on the War on Terror have themselves becomes sources of terror, short-circuiting the power Ugandans might otherwise have over their own destinies.

More than 20 years ago, Epstein set out for Uganda to work as a public health consultant. The $20 billion in Western aid poured into the country since then has done little to improve the well-being of the Ugandan people, whose rates of poverty, illiteracy, and mortality remain staggeringly high. Instead, much of this money has been used to shore up brutal and dangerous dictatorships in the region. ANOTHER FINE MESS offers a new way of thinking about the crises that have ravaged Uganda, Rwanda, Congo, Sudan and Somalia and suggest the true heart of darkness lies not in Africa, but in Western centers of power.