A black female face in the upper echelon of the economics field appears to be pretty rare. I’m in an intermediate economics class right now and there are four or five women in a class with 30 people, two of those women are black. Present company included. If black female economists are rare at this level, imagine how much rarer they are at the PhD level? Dambisa Moyo is one black woman kicking butt and taking names in the world of economics and finance, and she has the PhD from Oxford University and work experience at the World Bank and Goldman Sachs to prove it. Oh, and she graduated from Harvard too.

Ms. Moyo is the author of two books: How the West Was Lost: Fifty Years of Economic Folly – And the Stark Choices that Lie Ahead and Dead Aid: Why Aid Is Not Working and How There is Another Way for Africa. The latter book put forth the relatively novel idea–novel to the development community anyways–that African nations need to become self-sufficient by weaning themselves off of aid–food and otherwise–from more developed nations. Moyo believes that if African leaders do the right thing and the people do their part, African nations can indeed be self-sufficient and stop taking the kinds of hand-outs from Western nations that keep African countries from developing on their own.

An African woman talking about self-sufficiency for Africans, a sort of do-it-yourself movement on African soil with African leaders at the forefront and African people doing their part? Sounds good to me!

Moyo serves on the board of Barclays Bank, SABMiller, Lundin Petroleum, and Barrick Gold. So not only is Ms. Moyo’s intelligence and experience recognized and given respect in the world of international development, but also in private industry.

Dambisa Moyo’s accomplishments speak for themselves: degrees from the most elite and well-known educational institutions in the world, respect from the private sector, and an ability to write what few others seem willing to say–Africa can and should stand on its own without being deluged with development aid from Western countries that only serves to keep African nations in a cycle of dependence.

Moyo is the New, NEW Black women because she makes self-sufficiency and thinking independently look good.