Oxford University economist Professor Paul Collier has won the 2008 Lionel Gelber Prize for his book: ‘The Bottom Billion: Why the poorest countries are failing and what can be done about it’.
The Lionel Gelber Prize, called by The Economist as ‘the world’s most important award for non-fiction’ is awarded to the author of the world’s best book on international affairs.
Paul Collier is Professor of Economics and Director of the Centre for the Study of African Economies. He is a Professorial Fellow of St Antony’s College. His past appointment include having served as Director of Research at the World Bank and as an advisor to the British Government’s commission on Africa.
In The Bottom Billion, published by Oxford University Press, discusses how 980 million people around the globe are living in ‘trapped countries clearly heading towards a black hole.’ Poverty populations are found much in Africa, but the book also identifies other large pockets of severe poverty in such places as Bolivia, Cambodia, East Timor, Haiti, Laos, North Korea, Myanmar, Yemen, and elsewhere.
Professor Collier uses reconstruction of Europe after the Second World War as an analogy for the challenge of lifting populations out of poverty. In his book, he calls for not only immediate aid, but also cooperation from multilateral institutions as the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, which will effectively promote trade and security.
Professor Collier will be awarded at the ceremony to be held in Toronto on 1 April. He will also accept the $15,000 prize at the Munk Centre, where he will also deliver the Lionel Gelber Lecture. The Centre for the Study of African Economies (CSAE) has been undertaking research on Africa for more than a decade, and has become one of the largest concentrations of academic economists and social scientists working on Africa outside the continent itself.
