The Bottom Billion
by Paul Collier
Oxford University Press £16.99, $28
Paul Collier, the director of the Centre for the Study of African Economies at Oxford university, has devoted three decades to the study of African economics. In this splendid book he has used that work to answer the most important question in development: why are so many countries now failing?
About 80 per cent of the population of developing countries lives in countries whose populations are becoming better off. Billions live in countries that are developing very swiftly. But almost a billion people – 70 per cent of whom live in sub-Saharan Africa – are in economically stagnant or declining countries. In all, 58 countries are in this desperate condition. Yet, as Collier remarks: “An impoverished ghetto of 1bn people will be increasingly impossible for a comfortable world to tolerate.”
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