We need to think differently about Africa's economy. For centuries, Westerners have tried to 'fix' African economies. Since the acceptance of slavery, missionaries, philanthropists, development economists, and NGOs have arrived on the continent, filled with good intentions and bad ideas. Their experiments have consistently failed, much to the surprise of everyone involved.

In this brief, bold history of Western economic thought on Africa, historian Bronwen Everill argues that these interventions fail because they start from a misleading assumption: that African economies simply need to become more like the West. Ignoring its own traditions of economic thought, Europeans and Americans assume a set of global economic laws they thought could be applied anywhere. They impose particular Western ideas about development, wealth, debt, unemployment, inflation, women's work, and more, using Western metric systems to evaluate African countries.

The West does not know better than African countries how an economy should operate. By examining the myths and realities of our complex economic history, Africonomics moves from Western ignorance to African understanding.

Pages: 304, Dimensions: 15.9x15.9cm