“Without an informed electorate, politicians will continue to use the bottom billion merely for photo opportunities, rather than promoting real transformation,” according to Paul Collier in his book The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries are Failing and What Can Be Done About It. The book has been written with the aims of building a unity of purpose and educating the wider electorates whose views shape what is possible.
Whereas in the past there was a “rich world” of one billion people and a poor world composed of everybody else, there is now a world in which 80% of the people live in developed or developing countries while one billion people live in countries which are caught in poverty traps. The author has identified four such traps, namely the conflict trap, the natural resource trap, the “landlocked with bad neighbours” trap and the “bad governance in a small country” trap.
One of the great strengths of the book is the research approach in which the author tries to find reliable statistical evidence which answers the questions about what causes poverty, rather than merely relying on speculation and guesswork as most other writers seem to. However, the author does not actually provide footnotes revealing his sources and he makes minor errors, such as stating on page 55 that Somalia is a neighbouring country to Uganda. Notwithstanding these weaknesses, the book is one of the best-written and most thought provoking books available on poverty, and it is essential reading for anyone working in or interested in foreign aid.
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[…] of the 51 books that I reviewed in 2009, which is the best? There were many good books. The Bottom Billion by Paul Collier provides a scientific but readable treatment of the reasons why the world’s […]