The record of the international development effort over the past half-century has generally been disappointing-success in east Asia, failure in Africa and limited success in countries containing the majority of the people of the developing world. After 45 years well over a billion people still...

In this paper we consider the hypothesis that aid effectiveness can be linked to 'good policies' and thus that aid, if it is to have maximum impact, should be directed at countries following good policies. This is an idea which we have considerable sympathy with in principle and have built upon...

Has the increasingly pro-poor stance of the World Bank, as manifested in particular in its most recent World Development Report (WDR), caused it to abandon its traditionally free-market attitudes ? The answer is 'yes and no'. The pursuit of 'security' espoused by the WDR has forced the Bank to...

In opposition to a number of the presentations at the Conference, we argue that the development of foodcrop agriculture needs to be considered as a pivotal poverty reduction strategy in Africa-in spite of the sector's erratic performance which has seen a number of 'mini-green revolutions' take...

Analysis of the poverty impacts of microfinance is almost exclusively focused on the direct impacts on microfinance clients. The Imp-Act programme emphasizes the need to also consider the 'wider impacts' achieved through non-client beneficiaries of microfinance. To fully understand and achieve...