05 Mar 08

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 is awarded to the author of the world’s best book on international affairs. The Economist has called it ‘the world’s most important award for non-fiction.'

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. He formerly 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, Professor Collier sees 980 million people around the globe living in ‘trapped countries clearly heading towards a black hole.' Many of these people are in Africa, but there are large pockets of severe poverty in such places as Bolivia, Cambodia, East Timor, Haiti, Laos, North Korea, Myanmar, Yemen, and elsewhere.

Professor Collier asserts that the challenge of lifting them out of poverty is akin to rebuilding Europe after the Second World War. He writes that it requires not only immediate aid, but also trade and security effectively promoted by such multilateral institutions as the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.

The award ceremony will be held in Toronto on 1 April when Professor Collier will accept the $15,000 award 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.