With the end of the Cold War and the rapid pace of globalization, the intentions and objectives of foreign assistance by the United States have attracted scholarly attention. Accordingly, there is an emerging position that the design and strategies for its organization and management in the new century should reflect the circumstances of the new international environment. The United States, as the sole superpower, has had an increasing role in maintaining peace worldwide through assistance in the development and growth of free markets and democracy. These activities serve the dual purpose of enabling the United States to assist the poor and disadvantaged, while yielding benefits to US commercial interests by way of opening up new markets for exports and jobs at home. 1

Wringing Success from Failure in Late-Developing Countries: Lessons from the Field, provides an analysis of the personal experiences of the author during a twenty-five year career with the United States Agency for International Development (AID) in Asia and Africa.

Joseph Stepanek, in a persuasive manner, injects his expert knowledge into the aid and development discourse, particularly on the topic of poverty alleviation in Africa. In ten chapters spiced with a few reader-friendly tables, he argues for well-designed development strategies and foreign assistance programs that are informed by lessons of the past and those that can also stimulate growth and reduce poverty in the least developing countries. He rightly underlines the time proven association between democracy and free market in the efforts to alleviate poverty globally.

Taking account of present realities in Africa, most notably Africa's share of the deepening problems of poverty and the degradation of the global environment, Stepanek's contends that developmental principles should not be set within an arena of purely material largesse (resource-centered), but within deeply-rooted traditions of open markets and democracy.

The author also argues that poverty in late-developing countries cannot be successfully alleviated without understanding and challenging all of its causes. Toward that end, Western governments, international development banks and donor agencies must reexamine how they design and administer aid, so as to not add to the problems that already imperil poor people or squander talent, goodwill, and resources.

These are indeed daunting tasks, but Stepanek is optimistic:

" I have argued here that a handful of market and democratic principles can create a new basis for development understanding and integration for the world's one poor continent, and for western interests there…The reader may have gained an impression that I promote these principles with such unqualified enthusiasm that global and consumer homogenization are the inevitable outcome. That is by no means the intention-but it is a risk. Better that the poor world faces these risks-ones founded, for the first time, on their full participation-than face a historic but ruinous continuation of patronizing aid prescribed by others. Poor countries must sort economic, political, and cultural priorities for themselves." (234-235)

This work is really self critical on many counts, but there are certainly downsides to a complete freeing of the markets in late-developing countries. The workings of the market will not always produce solutions to these countries problems, indeed, the evidence shows in many instances that they become worse as it fuels political resistance and harsher economic reforms. For example, how does one explain the sliding currencies and waning investor confidence in East Asian economies and the disastrous consequences on the poor in recent times? The author should have addressed these and related questions in a more convincing way than he attempted in this work.

The author notes that his primary audience is the American public, especially the younger generation, who he argues need to be convinced of the value of poor-world development, foreign aid, and the personal commitment to noble goals. It must be emphasized again and again that this a brilliant and self-critical work. Consequently, it is a must read for all stakeholders in the development of late-developing countries, all true Africans (at home and in the diaspora) who yearn for and are working towards a better sub-Saharan Africa. Indeed, as with some other related works, it sets the tone for the needed and crucial development paradigm for what Africa might look like: that is, development anchored on the principles of free market and democracy by, for and of the African people. Africa must look to itself, Stepanek concludes, if it is to achieve stable and long-lasting development into the 21st century.

Osaore Aideyan
Department of Politics
Claremont Graduate University

ENDNOTE

1 Carol Lancaster, "Redesigning Foreign Aid", Foreign Affairs, 79:5, September/October 2000; and Koehn, Peter H. and Olatunde J.B. Ojo (eds.). 1999. Making Aid Work: Innovative Approaches for Africa at the Turn of the Century. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press.