> BOOK REVIEWS
>
> Peter Lawrence on Paul Collier, *The Bottom Billion* and *War, Guns and
> Votes*.
> <http://newleftreview.org/?page=article&view=2838>Number-crunching
> solutions for global poverty from a former World Bank denizen.
Lawrence dissects Collier's techno-neolib ideology nicely, but this statement caught my eye:
"In sub-Saharan Africa, for example, gdp per capita, health, mortality and adult literacy rates have all deteriorated significantly over the past decades; over a third of the population is classified as undernourished; and in some regions, civil wars, with their accompanying mass rapes and population displacements, appear almost endemic." (Lawrence's text)
This whole Heart-of-Darkness thing really, really needs to be put to bed. GDP has stagnated, but has grown strongly since 2000. Certain health and mortality rates have declined slightly, though nothing like Russia's post-Soviet collapse -- there are some major successes as well (anti-malaria campaigns, decreases in infant mortality, better family planning). Literacy rates are up everywhere. I don't know where this 33% malnutrition figure comes from -- most data say its 50%, quite comparable to India. But 50% is far better than the 90% malnutrition rates of the colonial era (colonialism generated terrible mass famines). Finally, Africa's wars are no bloodier than the wars of nation-state formation which occurred in Latin America, North America, Asia or early modern Europe.
Sorry for the rant, but if we're serious about building a transnational Left, the first step is acknowledging how 1 billion people actually live.
-- DRR