In this paper we focus on the question: will the HIPC debt reduction programme help in the transformation of the development assistance business and change the rules of the ‘debt game’ in Africa? We concentrate on the donor and official creditor side, by exploring how the growing debt of...

The implicit assumption of the donor community is that Africa is trapped by its poverty, and that aid is necessary if Africa is to escape the trap. In this working paper, CGD president Nancy Birdsall suggests an alternative assumption: that Africa is caught in an institutional trap, wherein a...

Education is among the most prominent of the great challenges of development. This paper outlines thelikely effects of the AIDS pandemic in Africa on the continent's ability to produce education and use iteffectively for growth and poverty reduction. Four channels are explored. First, a supply...

We assess the dynamics behind the high net resource transfers of donors and creditors - IDA, bilaterals, IBRD, IMF and other multilateral creditors - to the countries of sub-Saharan Africa in the 1980s and 1990s. Analyzing a panel of 37 recipient countries over the years 1978-98, we find that...