The book is a radical critique of development aid. The author draws up the alarming observation of the failure of development aid since 1960, which has failed to bring about sustainable economic growth in Africa, and insists on the perverse structural effects that it entails. Consequently, the author recommends a gradual but total cessation of aid and the establishment of a development model not based on aid but on openness to the market and to capital.
 A student in the Alternative Management Major, a specialty of the HEC Paris Grande Ecole program, the author is particularly interested in the world of development and investment in emerging countries. This is why she went to Benin in 2007, as part of a humanitarian action, then, two years later, to Senegal, this time for a microfinance internship. Finally, she chose to go to Ecuador, in order to do her final thesis on the theme of financing businesses in rural areas.