Asian Tigers, African Lions

Asian Tigers, African Lions is an anthology of contributions by scholars and (former) diplomats related to the ‘Tracking Development’ research project, funded by the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and coordinated by the African Studies Centre and KITLV, both in Leiden, in collaboration with scholars based in Africa and Asia. The project compared the performance of growth and development of four pairs of countries in Southeast Asia and Sub-Sahara Africa during the last sixty years. It tried to answer the question how two regions with comparable levels of income per capita in the 1950s could diverge so rapidly. Why are there so many Asian tigers and not yet so many African lions? What could Africa learn from Southeast Asian development trajectories?

This book has won the Choice Outstanding Academic Title Award 2014

Bernard Berendsen is a member of the Advisory Council on Foreign Relations at the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs and a member of the Board of the African Studies Centre in Leiden. He has recently edited four volumes of lectures organized by the Society for International Development (SID).

Ton Dietz is Director of the African Studies Centre and Professor of the Study of African Development at Leiden University. He has written numerous policy-oriented articles and books on development issues and was the coordinator for Kenya in the Tracking Development project from 2010 to 2012.

Henk Schulte Nordholt is KITLV Professor of Southeast Asian Studies at the VU University in Amsterdam and head of the Research Department of the Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies (KITLV). His main fields of interest include Balinese history, political violence, the anthropology of colonialism and contemporary politics in Indonesia.

Roel van der Veen works for the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs and is a part-time Professor of International Relations at the University of Amsterdam and Professor of Dutch Foreign Policy at the University of Groningen. He has published two major books on development issues in Africa and Asia.

This book has won the Choice Outstanding Academic Title Award 2014!
'This volume reports on the Tracking Development project initiated by the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which involved academic institutes in the Netherlands; African and Asian students; and experts from Europe, the US, Asia, and Africa. Research design included an African PhD student in a paired Asian country, while an Asian counterpart reciprocated in Africa. The 14 comparative studies cover Nigeria/Indonesia, comparing technocracy and institutionalization, exchange rates, population policy and poverty reduction, and corruption; Malaysia/Kenya, focusing on agriculture and rural development, poverty reduction, industrial policy, and foreign direct investment; Vietnam/Tanzania, examining liberalization and poverty alleviation, the cashew market, and the textile industries; and Cambodia/Uganda, comparing agriculture, rural roads, and education. There was a clear policy orientation in all the studies, and ministry officials participated throughout. The case studies are preceded by four introductory and overview chapters, and followed by a concluding chapter helpfully titled "Policy and Governance ... Firm Findings and Remaining Questions." In a capsule, governance matters for good policy and outcomes, but the details of how and why are not always clear. As a one-volume, evidence-based response to why Asia has done so well and Africa so poorly, this book has no peer'. -J. H. Cobbe, Florida State University, in: Choice, May 2014