2. Samir Amin
PHOTOGRAPH BY DUNG VO TRUNG, SYGMA/CORBIS
Samir Amin is an Egyptian political economist who has written more than 30 books on the political economics of development as well as many analyses of Arab and African economies. Much of his work focuses on the relationship between developed and underdeveloped countries. An avowed Marxist, Amin believes capitalism is an invidious force that monopolizes commercial power, strangling growth in the developing world. Amin studied in Paris in the 1940s and 1950s, where he received degrees in political science and statistics, and earned his Ph.D. in economics in 1957. He then returned to his native Cairo, where he worked for the Institution for Economic Management. He left Egypt to work with the Ministry of Planning of the newly independent Mali and later was a professor of economics in France and Senegal. He then became director of the United Nations African Institute for Economic Development and Planning and is currently the director of the Third World Forum, an organization in Dakar, Senegal, that brings together opinion makers from Africa, Asia, and Latin America to analyze and strategize on global development.
