Asia-Africa Development Divergence: A Question of Intent

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Bloomsbury Academic, Mar 15, 2015 - Business & Economics - 264 pages

Why have South-East Asian countries like Malaysia, Indonesia and Vietnam been so successful in reducing levels of absolute poverty, while in African countries like Kenya, Nigeria and Tanzania, despite recent economic growth, most people are still almost as poor as they were half a century ago?

This book presents a simple, radical explanation for the great divergence in development performance between Asia and Africa: the absence in most parts of Africa, and the presence in Asia, of serious developmental intent on the part of national political leaders.

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About the author (2015)

David Henley is professor of Contemporary Indonesia Studies at Leiden University. He obtained his doctorate from the Australian National University and has worked as lecturer at Griffith University, as researcher at the Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies (KITLV), and as research fellow at the National University of Singapore. His fields of interest are the politics, history and geography of South-East Asia, particularly Indonesia. From 2006 to 2012 he was a coordinator of Tracking Development, an international research project designed to compare Asian and African development trajectories with a view to identifying practical policy lessons for development and development cooperation in Africa.
David Henley is professor of Contemporary Indonesia Studies at Leiden University. He obtained his doctorate from the Australian National University and has worked as lecturer at Griffith University, as researcher at the Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies (KITLV), and as research fellow at the National University of Singapore. His fields of interest are the politics, history and geography of South-East Asia, particularly Indonesia. From 2006 to 2012 he was a coordinator of Tracking Development, an international research project designed to compare Asian and African development trajectories with a view to identifying practical policy lessons for development and development cooperation in Africa.

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