“They call it a country. In fact it is just a Zaire-shaped hole in the middle of Africa,” wrote The Economist in 1995. Well before then, Erwin Blumenthal, who visited Zaire on behalf of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to assess prospects for reform, warned that, despite promises from President Mobutu (1965-97) that loans would be repaid, “there is no—I repeat no—chance on the horizon that Zaire’s many creditors will recover their money.’ Meanwhile, Mobutu did not use loans to build state bureaucracies or provide services; he actively discouraged them. Even by official accounts, the modest spending of 10 percent of Zaire’s budget on education and health services in 1982 fell to zero a decade later.