Poverty Reduction in the Course of African Development

Machiko Nissanke is Emeritus Professor of Economics at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, where she taught graduate courses in international and financial economics from 1993 to 2015. She previously worked at the University of Oxford, Birkbeck College, and University College London. She was Research Fellow of Nuffield College, Oxford and the Overseas Development Institute. Her research interests include finance and development, international economics (trade and finance), globalization and its impacts on inequality and poverty, debt dynamics and macroeconomic management, institutional economics, comparative economic development in Asia and Africa, and North-South and South-South economic relations. Her publication includes 13 books, numerous articles in academic journals, book chapters, and reports by the World Bank and the UN agencies. She has served many international organizations as adviser and coordinator of multi-year research programmes.Muna Ndulo is Professor of Law and Elizabeth and Arthur Reich Director of the Leo and Arvilla Berger International Legal Studies Program at Cornell Law School, and Director of Cornell University's Institute for African Development. He is also Honorary Professor of Law at the University of Cape Town and Extra Ordinary Professor of Law at Free State University. He was formerly Professor of Law and Dean of the School of Law at the University of Zambia. He served as Legal Officer in the International Trade Law branch of the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL) from 1986 to 1995. He has carried out several UN assignments in South Africa, Kosovo, Afghanistan, and East Timor. More recently, he has been a consultant to the constitution-making processes in Kenya, Somalia, and Zimbabwe. He has published 14 books and over 100 articles in academic journals. He is the founder of the Southern African Institute for Policy and Research (SAIPAR).

This book-a selection of papers from a conference in honor of Erik Thorbecke, perhaps the most distinguished scholar of poverty and income distribution in Africa-shows that the relationship between growth and poverty in Africa is much more nuanced and varied, especially when considering broader definitions of poverty. It delves into the more complex relationship between growth and poverty through case studies of Kenya, Senegal, and Zambia as well as a "reexamination" of the main mechanism by which growth affects poverty, namely employment, by one of the most distinguished contributors to that topic, Gary Fields. Finally, the book addresses the underlying factors governing the growth-poverty relationship, governance and institutions. ... taken together, the chapters paint a rich, subtle, and highly differentiated picture of the dynamics of poverty in the world's poorest continent-a fitting tribute to Erik Thorbecke.

• PART I. OVERVIEW; PART II. EVOLVING POVERTY PROFILE IN AFRICA; PART III. TRACING POVERTY DYNAMICS IN SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA: COUNTRY CASE STUDIES; PART IV. STRUCTURE, GOVERNANCE AND INSTITUTIONS FOR INCLUSIVE DEVELOPMENT