The author of this publication is a career diplomat from Mauritius, who was working for the (now defunct) Organization of African Unity. The book contains a methodical and comprehensive review of the contemporary economic situation in sub-Saharan Africa, and argues vehemently in favour of a renewed financial commitment on the part of the international community to help Africa out of its developmental dilemma-a Marshall plan for Africa, so to speak. As such, the argument is very much in line with the contemporary discourse emanating from Africa itself, in the guise of NEPAD which asks for $60 billion for African development, and also from outside the region (e.g. the recent Commission on Capital Flows to Africa in the US).
The book provides a well-structured and balanced review of the evidence. Makhan starts by stressing the marginalization of Africa from international capital flows, the negative impact of deteriorating terms of trade, the low rate of domestic investment and savings, and the faltering commitment by the international community in terms of development aid (Ch 1 and 2). Despite the increasingly sound macroeconomic fundamentals of African countries during the 1990s, the author emphasizes that the recovery after the disastrous lost years of the 1980s has been slow, erratic and faltering. Chapter 3 outlines new priorities for foreign aid in the international context, and argues that, as far as Africa is concerned, those priorities do not go far enough. The author is surely right when he argues that the current agenda is 'mostly silent on such other supply-side and structural constraints as the lack of physical constraints . . . and the inadequacy of investment in productive activities . . . in other words, the programme emanating from the UN conferences has set goals without the nexus between the goals and the development of infrastructure, economic integration, investment, production, output, trade and growth ' (pp. 74-75).
Chapter 4 makes some brief observations about the quality of aid delivery and management, and gives a fairly up-beat interpretation of the political reforms that swept Africa during the 1990s. Makhan claims that they represent 'a return to a public agenda as expressed through political pluralism, popular participation, the rule of law, greater respect for individual rights, alleviation of economic hardship and improvement of social conditions' (p. 85). Not all the points made are fully substantiated, and the chapter would have benefited from a deeper discussion of such critical issues as capacity-building in the civil service or economic management. Finally, Chapter 5 draws conclusions, in particular that 'the reforms of the last 15 years have created the best policy environment in decades for the development of Africa' (p. 89).
Makhan's book basically argues that the lessons from the past have been learned. The policy environment within Africa itself has improved, but the external response has been disappointing. All that is required is external resources to allow African countries to escape the 'vicious circle whereby the existing production and accumulation structures were unable to generate the growth in export earnings needed to maintain imports, which in turn constrained investment and income growth ' (p. 33).
The argument is certainly clear, but is it right? How far should Africa be integrated into the international system? Would an even deeper dependence on the outside be beneficial over the longrun? Or should we look elsewhere for the basic causes of, and solutions to, African poverty? Certainly, given the paucity of private capital inflows, Africa's huge resource gap is a key problem that needs to be addressed. In addition, there is no doubt a great hypocrisy in the donor discoursedespite the multitude of proclamations in favour of African development, aid flows to the continent fell by almost half during the decade of the 1990s (UNECA, 2002).
Nevertheless, to argue that the key to understanding Africa's economic problems is the lack of external financial resources is not difficult to rebut. Countries like Nigeria or Equatorial Guinea,