Books

In How Boards Work, Dambisa Moyo addresses fundamental questions:

• The three (3) key responsibilities of a corporate board
• The levers and limitations boards have to create change across the business landscape
• Whether corporate boards remain the ideal governance structure in the 21st century

As well as more urgent questions:

• How boards should address financial shareholder versus stakeholder capitalism, and balance profit motives with growing broader expectations of society
• How boards should approach quotas as they look to address diversity, and the emergence of a new cultural frontier around data privacy, worker advocacy, and environmental concerns
• Whether being ESG-compliant is at odds with investing in China
• How to best to tackle 21st century challenges from digitization to deglobalization

A generation after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the world is once again on the edge of chaos. Demonstrations have broken out from Belgium to Brazil led by angry citizens demanding a greater say in their political and economic future, better education, healthcare and living standards. The bottom line of this outrage is the same; people are demanding their governments do more to improve their lives faster, something which policymakers are unable to deliver under conditions of anaemic growth. Rising income inequality and a stagnant economy are threats to both the developed and the developing world, and leaders can no longer afford to ignore this gathering storm.

In Edge of Chaos, Dambisa Moyo sets out the new political and economic challenges facing the world, and the specific, radical solutions needed to resolve these issues and reignite global growth. Dambisa enumerates the four headwinds of demographics, inequality, commodity scarcity and technological innovation that are driving social and economic unrest, and argues for a fundamental retooling of democratic capitalism to address current problems and deliver better outcomes in the future. In the twenty-first century, a crisis in one country can quickly become our own, and fragile economies produce a fragile international community. Edge of Chaos is a warning for advanced and emerging nations alike: we must reverse the dramatic erosion in growth, or face the consequences of a fragmented and unstable global future.

We all know the world’s resources – the commodities that underpin our daily lives and economies – are scarce. But how many of us know what that really means for the global economy today?

Winner Take All represents the penetrating research Dambisa Moyo has conducted to uncover the realities behind the numbers. By looking at the developing trends in our commodities markets, and recent geo-political shifts, she has revealed the true state of the contemporary world and the shape it will take over the coming decades. This is not just about oil.

Commodities permeate virtually every aspect of the modern world: from the energy complexes that power transport and the electricity grid, to the water needed for all life. From land for food production to the long list of minerals without which technology ceases to exist.

What Moyo shows is we are in the middle of unprecedented times. She details how China has embarked on one of the greatest commodity rushes in history and examines the effects this is having on us all. Where is China taking control of land and water? Who is giving up their title to these precious resources? What will be the financial and geopolitical effect of all this?

And is large-scale resource conflict inevitable or avoidable?

Winner Take All is a challenging look at the hard facts we all need to face if we want a just, balanced and peaceful global economy for the 21st Century.

Amid the hype of China’s rise to global power, the most important story of our generation is being pushed aside: how the West’s rapidly growing population of the unskilled, unemployed, and disaffected threatens the nation’s wealth and stature.

In How the West Was Lost, the New York Times bestselling author and economist Dambisa Moyo sheds light on how a host of shortsighted policy decisions have left the economic seesaw poised to tip away from the Western industrialized economies and toward the emerging world. Faced with this impending calamity, the West can choose either to remain open to the international economy or to close itself off, adopting protectionist policies that will give itself time and space to redress these pervasive structural problems.

Incisive and illuminating, How the West Was Lost not only exposes the policy myopia of the West that has led it onto a path of economic decline but also reveals the crucial—and radical—policy actions that must be taken to stem this tide.

In the past fifty years, more than $1 trillion in development-related aid has been transferred from rich countries to Africa. Has this assistance improved the lives of Africans? No. In fact, across the continent, the recipients of this aid are not better off as a result of it, but worse—much worse.

In Dead Aid, Dambisa Moyo describes the state of postwar development policy in Africa today and unflinchingly confronts one of the greatest myths of our time: that billions of dollars in aid sent from wealthy countries to developing African nations has helped to reduce poverty and increase growth.

In fact, poverty levels continue to escalate and growth rates have steadily declined—and millions continue to suffer. Provocatively drawing a sharp contrast between African countries that have rejected the aid route and prospered and others that have become aid-dependent and seen poverty increase, Moyo illuminates the way in which overreliance on aid has trapped developing nations in a vicious circle of aid dependency, corruption, market distortion, and further poverty, leaving them with nothing but the “need” for more aid.

Debunking the current model of international aid, Moyo offers a bold new road map for financing development of the world’s poorest countries that guarantees economic growth and a significant decline in poverty—without reliance on foreign aid or aid-related assistance.

Dead Aid is an unsettling yet optimistic work, a powerful challenge to the assumptions and arguments that support a profoundly misguided development policy in Africa. And it is a clarion call to a new, more hopeful vision of how to address the desperate poverty that plagues millions.