The multilateral banks are powerful forces in the international community, providing loans of more than $250 billion to developing countries over the last halfcentury. The best known of these, the World Bank, has been studied extensively, but the 'regional development banks' are little understood, even within their own geographic regions. This series looks specifically at the policies and projects of the various regional development banks, which like the World Bank, have recently come under growing criticism from grassroots organizations, environmental groups and others. In the course of the past decade, the majority of countries in Africa have undergone rigorous structural adjustment and monetary liberalization. When the African Development Bank was created, and for a greater part of the Bank's history, the present tolerant political regimes, and the liberal macroeconomic and development environments did not exist. The Bank has had to operate as best it could in a politically unstable setting and among stagnant and declining regimes. It is because such problems face the bank that this book is of great value to both African and non-African investors in the Bank, as well as all Africans. The banks operational and policy shortcomings are clearly described and analysed, and every major point in the book has been dispassionately made on the basis of thorough research or from the wealth of experience of the authors.

E Philip English
E. Philip English is a Washington, D.C.-based economist, having worked at both the North-South Institute and the International Development Research Centre in Ottawa, Ontario. He worked at the African Development Bank from 1985 to 1988

Harris M Mule
Harris M. Mule was for fourteen years deputy permanent secretary and then permanent secretary in the Kenyan government's Ministry of Finance and Planning, and for a further five years in senior positions at the International Fund for Agricultural Development.