ABSTRACT
The donor community may look back on the 1990s as a watershed. In that decade, some developing countries took off in growth terms, apparently benefiting from and effectively exploiting the increasing integration of the global market. But others-in sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, and much of Central Asia-seemed stuck. Many of the countries where growth faltered had been major recipients of development assistance during several decades and under the tutelage of the donors had implemented structural reforms and thousands of projects. In doing so, some had accumulated substantial debt to multilateral and bilateral creditors to the point that the donors were engaged in a major effort to write down those debts. For many of the world’s poorest countries, the record of development and development assistance seemed dismal.
