Tropical Gangsters

When Robert Klitgaard, an adventurous young economist and former Harvard professor, arrived in the steamy backwater of Equatorial Guinea as head of a World Bank program to rehabilitate its ruined economy, he soon discovered that beneath the placid surface of this tiny nation there seethed a host of tropical gangsters: corrupt government officials, capitalist cowboys, lazy "experts" paid through foreign aid, and fly-in, fly-out negotiators from international financial institutions. "If we can turn this economy around," the author said optimistically on arrival, "we can do it anywhere."In an account as gripping as any of V.S. Naipaul's, Klitgaard chronicles his adventures as he tries to get Equatorial Guinea on the path of economic reform. Along the way he meets the witch doctor Milagroso, who runs the central bank, the aging World Banker Horace, who wishes the country would get no aid at all, and the Brilliant Saturnino, an Equatoguinean who fights corruption and ends up being tortured for his courage. Klitgaard explores the country's beaches in search of surf and the social life of the capital, Malabo, with its lone discotheque and exotic women. Wether drafting a controversial memo on the nation's cocoa industry, or negotiating an agreement with the International Monetary Fund, or careening around jungle roads on a full-race motocross bike, or fighting malaria, Klitgaard provides an insightful story of how the success of structural adjustment hinges on who gets structurally adjusted - and who turn out to be the real tropical gangsters.Why is development in Africa - and by extension, the rest of the world - so difficult? Why has foreign aid so often failed? How can the new movement towards free markets be made to work? Klitgaard's fascinating book has implications far beyond Equatorial Guinea or the African continent.