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Africonomics

A History of Western Ignorance

Bronwen Everill

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English
HARPER360
14 February 2025
'A historically insightful read' Financial Times

'A wry, rollicking, and provocative history' Michael Taylor, author of The Interest

‘A thought-provoking analysis of Africa's relationship with economic imperialism’ Astrid Madimba and Chinny Ukata, authors of It’s A Continent

We need to think differently about African economics.

For centuries, Westerners have tried to ‘fix’ African economies. From the abolition of slavery onwards, missionaries, philanthropists, development economists and NGOs have arrived on the continent, full of good intentions and bad ideas. Their experiments have invariably gone awry, to the great surprise of all involved.

In this short, bold story of Western economic thought about Africa, historian Bronwen Everill argues that these interventions fail because they start from a misguided premise: that African economies just need to be more like the West. Ignoring Africa's own traditions of economic thought, Europeans and Americans assumed a set of universal economic laws that they thought could be applied anywhere. They enforced specifically Western ideas about growth, wealth, debt, unemployment, inflation, women’s work and more, and used Western metrics to find African countries wanting.

The West does not know better than African nations how an economy should be run. By laying bare the myths and realities of our tangled economic history, Africonomics moves from Western ignorance to African knowledge.

'Cheerfully provocative … sparkles with some illuminating moments' TLS
By:  
Imprint:   HARPER360
Country of Publication:   United Kingdom
Dimensions:   Height: 234mm,  Width: 153mm,  Spine: 23mm
Weight:   370g
ISBN:   9780008581152
ISBN 10:   0008581150
Pages:   304
Publication Date:  
Audience:   General/trade ,  ELT Advanced
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active

Bronwen Everill is the 1973 College Lecturer in History at Gonville & Caius College and Director of the Centre of African Studies at the University of Cambridge. Her books include Not Made By Slaves: Ethical Capitalism in the Age of Abolition and she is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.

Reviews for Africonomics: A History of Western Ignorance

'The west’s economic agenda — while full of good intentions — created significant problems for the continent… A historically insightful read' Tej Parikh, Financial Times Best New Books on Economics ‘The history of interactions between Western economists and the African continent provides a vast array of erroneous assumptions … Africonomics and the lessons therein bear reading and rereading’ Morten Jerven, Literary Review 'Cheerfully provocative … sparkles with some illuminating moments' TLS 'In this wry, rollicking, and provocative history of international economics, Bronwen Everill shows us how, over the course of centuries, Western ideals have collided repeatedly and disastrously with African realities – and how even the best-intended of interventions have often paved a road to hell' Michael Taylor, author of The Interest ‘A thought-provoking analysis of Africa's relationship with economic imperialism’ Astrid Madimba and Chinny Ukata, authors of It’s A Continent ‘This book outstandingly analyses the shortcomings of a certain approach to thinking about Africa, and it implicitly indicates the other side of the coin: the forces for change that will continue to shape the continent from within’ Kofi Adjepong-Boateng, Centre for Financial History, University of Cambridge REVIEWS FOR NOT MADE BY SLAVES: 'Impressive…[Readers] will be rewarded with greater understanding of historical developments that changed the relationship between consumers and producers in a global economy in ways that reverberate to this day' Wall Street Journal 'Everill repositions West Africa as central to the broader Atlantic story of 18th and 19th century economic morality, its relationship with commercial ethics, and the expansion of capitalism' Financial Times 'Offers a penetrating new perspective on abolition in the British Empire …Impressive' Jacobin


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