"Despite the rhetoric, the people of sub-Saharan Africa are becoming poorer. From Tony Blair's Africa Commission, the G7 finance ministers' debt relief, the Live 8 concerts, the Make Poverty History campaign and the G8 Gleneagles promises, to the United Nations 2005 summit and the Hong Kong WTO meeting, Africa's gains have been mainly limited to public relations. The central problems remain: exploitative debt and financial relationships with the North, phantom aid, unfair trade, distorted investment, capital flight and the continent's brain/skills drain. Moreover, capitalism in most African countries has witnessed the emergence of excessively powerful ruling elites. While noting their role as collaborators, this book contextualizes Africa's wealth outflow within a stagnant yet financially volatile world economy."--Jacket.