This book reviews the experience of the Middle East and North Africa region with poverty and human development since the mid-1980s. It finds that poverty rates did not decline by much during this period while health and education indicators improved substantially. The stagnation of poverty rates...

In the new millennium, the Western aid effort towards Africa has surged due to writings by well-known economists, a celebrity mass advocacy campaign, and decisions by Western leaders to make Africa a major foreign policy priority. This survey contrasts the predominant "transformational" approach...