The Africa: Policies for Prosperity series, published by Oxford University Press, was launched in 2010 with a volume on economic policy options for Kenya. This volume was co-edited by Christopher Adam and Paul Collier along with Njuguna Ndungu, the then-Governor of the Central Bank of Kenya; subsequent volumes on Zambia and Tanzania were published in 2014 and 2016 in both cases with the central bank governor serving as the third editor. Each volume consists of a series of chapters on key economic policy issues facing the country.

When a natural disaster destroys public capital, these direct losses are exacerbated by indirect losses arising from reduced output while reconstruction takes place. These indirect losses may be much larger, relative to the direct ones, in low-income countries, because they lack the finance for rapid reconstruction.