First World, Third World

This new updated and extended edition of First World, Third World examines the failures of aid to eliminate poverty. The world development effort can claim only limited success, and in some parts of the world, especially Africa, failure must be recognised. William Ryrie, while starting from a position of sympathy with the aims of the aid effort, insists that the record must be analysed with ruthless honesty. Well-intentioned aid has often had perverse and harmful effects. One of these has been to undermine the working of the market economy, which offers the best hope for development and growth. His book proposes a new approach to the development task which would reconcile it with market philosophies.

SIR WILLIAM RYRIE'S varied career, including much first-hand experience of the Third World, qualifies him particularly well to write about aid and development. The first fifteen years of his life were spent in India. He worked in the Colonial Office and then for twenty years at the British Treasury, including four years on the Boards of the World Bank and the IMF. For two years he managed the British aid programme, as Permanent Secretary of the Overseas Development Administration. Then from 1984 to 1993 he was Head of the International Finance Corporation, a part of the World Bank Group which exists to promote economic development through the fold, establishing it as an important factor on the world development scene. Ryrie is now a part-time investment banker mainly active in emerging markets around the world. He is Deputy Chairman of the Commonwealth Development Corporation.