In the latest in the 'African Arguments' series, Tom Porteous provides a succinct and very useful overview of some of the highs and lows of Britain's Africa policies under the Labour government ... The book serves as an excellent overview of the issues involved in trying to design and implement policies in a continent as diverse and afflicted as Africa ... He does so with admirable clarity while at the same time remaining sensitive to the genuine dilemmas that confronted the British government

D. Williams, George Washington University

A lucid, hugely informative and insightful account of British policy towards Africa under Blair. It should be required reading for today's Ministers and their advisers

David Mepham, Save the Children

This is the most helpful and illuminating book on a Western country's foreign policy in Africa for a very long time. Porteous takes us behind the scenes into the policy world itself. Rarely have such intricacies been conveyed so compellingly

Jane Guyer, Johns Hopkins University

Tom Porteous provides an unusually rounded balance-sheet, crisp and without pomp, of the results of Britain's rather overweening policies towards Africa during the Blair years. If the risks of deterioration in the life-chances of most Africans are to be reduced, political and developmental strategy must, he argues, be better informed, less fashion-prone, and less blinkered by a naïvely conceived counter-terrorism. Seldom does one read such a rounded analysis of these complex interrelated issues.

Jonathan Benthall, University College London

A succinct and very useful overview of some of the highs and lows of Britain's Africa policies under the Labour government.

Paul D. Williams, George Washington University