Reformers in International Development: Five Remarkable Lives

This book brings to life the remarkable stories of five exceptional international development leaders and influencers: Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Domingo Cavallo, Ela Bhatt, Dzingai Mutumbuka, and Adolfo Figueroa. Together, their experiences and accomplishments challenge us to rethink conventional notions of leadership and international development and to reflect on how others from Africa, Asia, and Latin America will change the world in the years ahead.

Drawing on the author’s decades-long relationships with each of the five, the book tells how they overcame incredible barriers and dreadful odds to rise from ordinary and challenged backgrounds to achieve extraordinary impact in important roles, both in their countries and globally. With original firsthand insights, the book explores the character-revealing decisions they made, confronting moral dilemmas between protecting their country, their career, their values, and even their lives when threatened by corrupt antagonists. The book combines a free-flowing storytelling style with an analytical framework to examine how these five determined individuals struggled to reduce poverty, protect basic rights, and promote justice.

The book will be invaluable for the international development community, practitioners, students, and researchers. It will also captivate general readers new to the fascinating subject of how African, Asian, and Latin American countries develop and what that will mean for the world as a whole. While many books have been written on what should be done to help rising nations thrive, this one takes readers inside the human story of who brings about change and how.

David de Ferranti has devoted a 40-year career in international development to working with over 50 countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. He held senior management posts in the World Bank, founded and led Results for Development (R4D), directed the Washington Office of the International Initiative for Impact Evaluation (3ie), and was a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and the United Nations Foundation, a visiting professor at Harvard and Georgetown Universities, and a research economist at Rand, the think tank. He is a board member of four not-for-profit organizations, chairing two of them. He holds a PhD in economics from Princeton University and a BA from Yale University.