Reforming the Unreformable
Lessons from Nigeria
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- $21.99
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- $21.99
Publisher Description
A report on development economics in action, by a crucial player in Nigeria's recent reforms.
Corrupt, mismanaged, and seemingly hopeless: that's how the international community viewed Nigeria in the early 2000s. Then Nigeria implemented a sweeping set of economic and political changes and began to reform the unreformable. This book tells the story of how a dedicated and politically committed team of reformers set out to fix a series of broken institutions, and in the process repositioned Nigeria's economy in ways that helped create a more diversified springboard for steadier long-term growth.
The author, Harvard- and MIT-trained economist Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, currently Nigeria's Coordinating Minister for the Economy and Minister of Finance and formerly Managing Director of the World Bank, played a crucial part in her country's economic reforms. In Nigeria's Debt Management Office, and later as Minister of Finance, she spearheaded negotiations with the Paris Club that led to the wiping out of $30 billion of Nigeria's external debt, 60 percent of which was outright cancellation. Reforming the Unreformable offers an insider's view of those debt negotiations; it also details the fight against corruption and the struggle to implement a series of macroeconomic and structural reforms.
This story of development economics in action, written from the front lines of economic reform in Africa, offers a unique perspective on the complex and uncertain global economic environment.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This is a book with an identity crisis: is it a memoir, a "Seven Steps for Highly Successful Developing Countries," or a serious guidebook to help struggling economies find their way out of the morass of poor governance and corruption? Okonjo-Iweala, Nigeria's coordinating minister for the economy and minister of finance, and former managing director of the World Bank, has difficulty making up her mind. The author is well-placed to provide much needed insight into the difficult task of reforming a bloated and intransigent bureaucracy while jump-starting a failing economic system. Unfortunately, only halfway through the book does she manage to get past providing too much in the way of insignificant detail, such as how to maintain team cohesion, and bland, overly-generalized principles that can be found in many of today's self-help books for businessmen. Her insight into the many possible forms of graft are eye-opening for the Westerner. Her explanations of how to achieve at least minimal success in achieving reform of pension funds and the civil service are desperately required. It is therefore disappointing that Okonjo-Iweala did not share more of her hard-won wisdom.
