Ideas and agenda for economic growth and human development in sub-saharan Africa
Author: Ha-Joon Chang Publisher: Random House, 2007 276 pages. You’ve probably heard the Gospel of Free Market: if a country wants to break the cycle of poverty and achieve economic growth and prosperity, it should deregulate, open up its market, welcome investors, and unleash the power of the private sector. Nationalisation is anathema; protection is…
Author: Paulo Freire Publisher: The Continuum Publishing Company Date: 1970 When Paulo Freire wrote Pedagogy of the Oppressed, the world was in the middle of fierce ideological war. The iron curtain was firmly shut, and the fire of anti-colonial struggle was burning wildly in the countries of Africa and Latin America. Nine years earlier,…
Author: Hernando De Soto Transworld Publishers, 2000 276 pages “The hour of capitalism’s greatest triumph is its hour of crisis”. This is Hernando De Soto’s opening statement in what has now become a classic of property rights. He starts with a brief description of the “triumph” of capitalism and the end of the cold war….
(2nd edition) Author: Michael E. Porter Publisher: Palgrave, New York, 1998 855 pages Unlike David Landes’ Wealth and Poverty of Nations, which was unashamedly an euro-centric take on the political history of development, and unlike Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs and Steel, the award winning anthropological history of development weakened by its far reaching environmental determinism,…