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Good Growth and Governance for Africa

Rethinking Development Strategies

Akbar Noman, Joseph Stiglitz

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This is the draft introductory chapter of IPD's Africa Task Force Volume "Good Growth and Governance for Africa: Rethinking Development Strategies" which addresses the question of policy options for generating and sustaining high growth in Africa. This involves not merely documenting and interpreting policy lessons but also considering issues which affect how to translate and adapt them to particular country contexts. There is, of course, substantial diversity within Africa in terms of country characteristics, past performance and future prospects. Rather less obvious is the diversity of circumstances and strategies in the success stories of Asia, where the mix of policies varied considerably across countries and over time. This volume not only revisits common African policy prescriptions, looking at the context of their creation and evolution, but it also revisits the policies of many East Asian countries, looking at the particular circumstances which led to their success and failure.

About the Authors

Akbar Noman
Senior Policy Fellow
Initiative for Policy Dialogue

Akbar Noman is an economist with wide-ranging experience of policy analysis and formulation in a variety of developing and transition economies, having worked extensively for the World Bank where he was Senior Economist for Ethiopia and an influential adviser to the government. He combines teaching at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs with being a Senior Fellow at the Initiative for Policy Dialogue. His other academic appointments have been at Oxford University (where he was also a student) and the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex.

Joseph Stiglitz
Co-President
Initiative for Policy Dialogue

Joseph E. Stiglitz is co-founder and Executive Director of the Initiative for Policy Dialogue at Columbia University, for which he also co-chairs the macroeconomics, Capital Market Liberalization, and Intellectual Property task forces. Dr. Stiglitz holds joint professorships at Columbia University's Economics Department and its Business School. From 1997 to 2000 he was the World Bank's Senior Vice President for Development Economics and Chief Economist. From 1995- 97 he served as Chairman of the U.S. Council of Economic Advisers and as a member of President Clinton's cabinet. From 1993 to 1995 he was a member of the Council of Economic Advisers. He was previously a professor of economics at Stanford, Princeton, Yale, and All Souls College. Dr. Stiglitz is a leading scholar of the economics of the public sector and was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2001 in addition to the American Economic Association's biennial John Bates Clark Award in 1979. His work has been recognized through his election as a fellow to the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Econometric Society, and the British Academy.