Hard-hitting indictment of development's failure - Rated 
getAbstract finds that this concise, clearly written and hard-hitting book by Paul Collier, one of the world's leading experts on Africa, is a must-read for anyone concerned with development, economic justice, trade, immigration, terrorism and related issues. The author has scant patience with sacred cows of either the right or the left. He penetrates the fictions and fantasies that have helped drive not only unproductive but actually counterproductive policies on aid, trade, investment and more. The book is enlightening, and entertaining in the way that good satire is entertaining. It is also inspiring, since Collier goes beyond merely identifying problems: He offers credible suggestions for solutions.
Beyond the Survival of the Fattest - Rated
While this is a scholarly economics textbook, the author makes a deliberate and commendable effort to keep the language, structure and flow of complex ideas accessible and captivating to the general reader. Its scope and inspiration is universal but the studies are mainly centred on poor African countries caught in various traps: of conflict, dependence on natural resources, bad governance and unfavourable geography including unhelpful neighbours, harsh topography and bleak climate. Collier's basic message is upbeat: none of the traps is inescapable, in spite of the current low rate and low probability of sustained exit from a trap for the billion or so living in the no or negative growth countries.
In the first part of the book, the author draws on extensive in-depth collaborative research to make very subtle analyses of the relationship between conflict and under development. Regrettably, the end result has sometimes the ring of the medieval disputations on the sex of angels. The direction of causation is rarely straight forward even after exhaustive wading through pools of data.
The problem of human as well as financial capital flight as an obstacle to economic growth is dealt with at greater length and cogency. The new approach here involves treating the emigration of skilled and unskilled labour and expatriation of financial resources in the same way as a risk mitigation strategy for the individual. To retain both funds and skills will require elimination of the perceived investment risk profile of the country.
But how can we reduce the growth-negating resource capture by the elite, from aid, natural resources such as oil and minerals? Collier cites the impact of the Extractive Resources Transparency Initiative and the Charter on Blood Diamonds as instances of a fairly effective multilateral approach.
The author further explores the self-perpetuating monster of poor governance, underscoring the need to put in place effective mechanisms for restraint: electoral competition, checks and balances, an independent judiciary and a free press. He shows how publicising budgetary allocations and disbursements for specific projects in the media allows for and encourages follow up by beneficiaries and vigilance by civil society groups to minimise or eliminate leakages. With a wry sense of humour, he advocates the repeal of the law of the political jungle, aptly termed "the survival of the fattest", noting that where patronage politics is feasible, electoral competition encourages the bribery of opinion makers or community leaders instead of using the provision of public services as an electoral argument, leaving the corrupt as the winners.
Should military intervention be an option? Contrasting Iraq and Kosovo, Somalia and Sierra Leone, he sees it as an option that should not be discarded but rather managed with utmost care and resolve. Will freer international trade, as promoted by WTO, help the poorest countries break out of the traps? Collier has doubts and makes a case for the AGOA type of initiative which involves positive discrimination; a handicap race where the Asian front runners have their feet shackled in tariffs to facilitate the entry of products from the poorest African countries. But beyond the traditional instruments of aid and trade, the emphasis of the G8 and other actors in development needs to shift towards issues of security strategies coupled with the application of internationally sanctioned norms and standards of equity and governance.
The Bottom Billion - Rated 
I find Paul Collier's book(The Bottom Billion) interesting to read. He easily highlights Many of the economic difficulties facing the poorest countries in the world. He then suggests multi-faced approach that can be applied to tackle some of the issues he highlighted, not only by the poor countries themselves but also by the so called "donor" countries.
Much of Paul's argument is based on data collected by international organization such as IMF and The World Bank and so on. When reading through the pages you would meet some high ranking individuals in these countries, i.e. the Finance minister, but rarely the ordinary person in the street and the challenges he/she faces. In my opinion this is the main weakness of this book. It's a top down approach. He does not talk so much about some of the side effects that export driven policies had on these countries such as planting crops for export in the best available land instead of the staple food of the country which people need to survive. Overall very good book, though I encourage Paul to get out of the big hotels and ministerial headquarters and meet ordinary people next time he visits one of these countries.
A joy to read - Rated
This is a thought-provoking book: the problems of the poorest countries are deeply and cogently analysed and explained, and appropriate policies proposed. It has the added virtue of being written in simple and refreshingly straight-forward language. There is much that is absolutely original here.
The one comment I have is that Collier bases some of his policy prescriptions on the assumption that the only way to develop is through export, which seems to suggest export-led growth and large projects. There is nothing about micro projects and the need to work with the poor to alleviate poverty through the provision of appropriate/intermediate technology.
I e-mailed him about this and received a rapid and courteous reply saying that he did not have space in the book to cover everything and that he agreed that exporting only makes sense as a growth strategy for some countries and that he has no fault to find with the micro approach.
He also suggested I might write this review; so I did.
PS I also thoroughly recommend the lecture on his website.
Packed with sense, sense and more sense... - Rated
Growing up in Nigeria, I thought that it was "normal" to have Latin Americans, Asians and Africans classified as the undeveloped Third World. Now as an adult living in the West, it would seem that the only pictures of starving children I see on TV are those from my native continent. It seems that despite all the aid and attention that Africa has received in the last 20 years, most African countries are stuck in pre-industrial poverty. Professor Collier's highly accessible book provides some illumination on the matter.
The basic outline of the book is that the economies of the poorest countries in the world, the so-called bottom billion, have not grown in the last 30 years because they are stuck in one or more of the following traps: The conflict trap, the natural resource trap, the "landlocked with bad neighbours" trap and the "bad governance in a small country" trap. He further proposes a number of solutions to the problem: Military intervention, adoption of voluntary laws and charters and changing rich-world trade policy
What I Liked:
The book is written in a logical, easy-to-read style. Professor Collier, former head of research at the World Bank, shows remarkable familiarity with African societies. He rightly points out that aid and revenue from commodities have enriched parasitic elites, which prefer to maintain the status quo. "Rent" money funds the gravy train for elites in these societies, which are based solely on patronage. The narrative is laced with interesting anecdotes of his travels in Africa. He recalls how he was treated as a celebrity in the Central African Republic and how in Nigeria, after he made it known that he worked for the World Bank, he was shunned by the Immigration official at the airport. One gets to learn some economics term such as the Dutch disease and ex and ante conditionality for investment.
He does not pull any punches when it comes to the entrenched elite in the bottom billion. If, after reading the book you think, "Geez, African elites are self-serving, egoistical spurns of the Devil", then you would not be too far from the truth. He reserves his most excoriating remarks for the Angolans. According to the author, when the East Timorese government needed an example of how to spend their anticipated oil revenues, they turned to Portuguese-speaking Angola. Professor Collier: they (the East Timorese) could have asked a brothel for a lecture on sanctity! Funny, sad but true. He also rightly points out that in a number of bottom-billion countries, there are courageous men and women who are working hard at reforming their economies. He names a few of them like Nigeria's Ngozi Okonji Iweala and Charles Soludo. Professor Collier notes that these brave people deserve support. So true!
Furthermore, he criticizes aid policy as had been administered to date. Aid has not worked and for good reason: it has been badly administered. As I have always been skeptical of both the aid-loving left and the aid-bashing right, I was pleased to read how Collier strikes a balance between both camps. His point: aid does not have to be given to poor countries as a sop for colonialism. It must be committed, targeted and given for over a decade to post-conflict societies.
What I Did Not Like:
The first few chapters are about the Professor and his students/co-researchers. He reduces the complexity of human interaction to fancy, sterile models, which may be used to predict the risk of civil war, for example. How neat! He manages to do the odd name-dropping also; how his models were recognized by the CIA and the United Nations. An effort to put some humanity in the numbers would have helped the tone of the first few chapters. He purposely skipped the names of the bottom billion countries except for a few countries like Nigeria, Central African Republic and Zimbabwe. What harm could have been done by mentioning the names of the countries? Moreover, he does not give any information on the equally poor Central Asian countries. It would have been nice to see how the dynamics of poverty differ between Africa and Afghanistan, for example.
Professor Collier observes that Africa has the largest number of land-locked countries in the world. According to him, "...The international system should not have let them become economic entities in the first place..." Well, that's putting a gloss on the issue here. Why not call a spade a spade? The reason why there are so many landlocked countries in Africa is colonialism. Countries like Chad and Burkina Faso were carved up as French zones of influence in 1888 and remain so till this day. The Professor does not even mention the "C" word. In his book, he asks us to get over it and move on as these countries are here to stay. True, but this is an injustice to the readers, who cannot understand that most African countries are not really "nations".
Reading the book, you'll get the impression that Africans just squandered the heaven-sent aid from the West in the last 50 years. The truth is more complex. There was the added complication of the Cold War. Africa was an important frontline of the Cold War. It is here that the US supported unsavoury dictators like Mobutu Sese-Seko, leading them to commit the most egregious crimes against their own people. The role of the World Bank (and its Western paymasters) in Post-Colonial Africa was comfortably ignored.
One of his instruments for pulling the bottom billion out of poverty, military intervention is not well-thought through. It seems to be an after-thought. He does not convincingly argue why the West should intervene in places like Congo. His argument that he does not want his son to live in such a divided world is a good one for the family dinner but may not cut much ice with hard-nosed politicians beholden to electorates, who do not like to see their soldiers dragged through the streets of some foreign pre-industrial country.
There is much else I like about the book but will not rehash in this review such as his view on Western trade tariffs and the need to protect the bottom-billion from Asia. It has a message for both sides of the political spectrum. To the left: there is nothing romantic about the poor African native, who lives in abject misery but is "happy" with his lot. Aid and growth can and should be compatible if it is to be effective. To the right: Don't overplay the ubiquity of growth. It alone cannot lift the bottom billion out of poverty. Growth must be combined with some painful change of policies, such as at the WTO, to be effective.
If you are interested in the plight of the Third World poor and wish to go beyond the lazy headlines and glib commentary on TV then this book, which provides a thought-provoking, pragmatic approach to the problem, is one that you should read. I cannot recommend it highly enough.
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