Abstract
This chapter provides an introduction to the volume and summarizes the arguments advanced by the contributors. The central argument is that the lot of the average African citizen has, in several respects, followed the same path from colonial exploitation to postcolonial misrule. What has changed over the years has been the beneficiaries of Africa’s exploitation. Political independence has so far not produced stable polities and balanced development in most African states. While changes have happened on several fronts, these changes have not been sufficient to transform key governance institutions that have facilitated rabid exploitation of the common wealth in favor of the ruling elite. The recommended way forward for African states is conscious efforts by domestic actors and the continent’s external development partners to transform the institutions that have fostered exploitation and bad governance over the years.
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- 1.
The World Bank reports that for the first time in history, Africa has overtaken Asia as the continent with the largest number of poor people on earth. See World Bank’s poverty data: http://iresearch.worldbank.org/PovcalNet/povDuplicateWB.aspx
- 2.
See, for example, Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson, Why Nations Fail: The origins of power, prosperity and poverty, (London: Profile Books Ltd., 2012): Ali A. Mazrui and Francis Wiafe-Amoako, African Institutions: Challenges to political, social, and economic foundations of Africa’s development, (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2016); Patrrick Chabal and Jean-Pascal Daloz, Africa Works: Disorder as Political Instrument (Oxford & Bloomington: James Currey & Indiana University Press, 1999).
- 3.
Richard A. Joseph, Democracy and Prebendal Politics in Nigeria: The Rise and Fall of the Second Republic, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987); Nicolas van de Walle, “Presidentialism and Clientelism in Africa’s Emerging Party Systems,” Journal of Modern African Studies, 42 no. 2 (2003): 297–32.
- 4.
Patrick Manning, Slavery and African Life: Occidental, Oriental and African Slave Trades, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990); Joseph Inikori and Stanley Engerman, “Introduction: Gainers and Losers in the Atlantic Slave Trade” in The Atlantic Slave Trade: Effects on Economies, Societies and People in Africa, the Americas, and Europe, eds., Joseph Inikori and Stanley Engerman (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1992), 1–21; Paul Lovejoy, Transformation in Slavery: A History in Slavery in Africa, (2nd Edition). (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2000); Nathan Nunn, “The long-term effects of Africa’s slave trades”, Quarterly Journal of Economics, 123 no. 1 (2008): 139–176.
- 5.
Ibid.
- 6.
See, for example, Crawford Young, The African Colonial State in Comparative Perspective (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1994); Richard Reid, A History of Modern Africa: 1800 to the Present, (Oxford: John Wiley & Sons, 2012).
- 7.
The Mau Mau insurgency in colonial Kenya was one of the strong forces that fought against colonial incursion in Africa. However, the British colonial authorities crushed the insurgents with superior military power. See Reid, A History of Modern Africa.
- 8.
Toyin Falola and Matthew Heaton, A History of Nigeria (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2008).
- 9.
Raul Prebisch, “The Economic Development of Latin America and its Principal Problems.” reprinted in Economic Bulletin for Latin America, 7 no. 1 (1950): 1–22; Hans Singer, “The distribution of gains between investing and borrowing countries” American Economic Review, 40, (1950): 473–85.
- 10.
Reid, A History of Modern Africa; Falola and Heaton, A History of Nigeria.
- 11.
Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson and James Robinson, “The Colonial Origins of Comparative Development: An Empirical Investigation,” The American Economic Review, 91 no. 5 (2001): 1369–1401.
- 12.
Ibid.
- 13.
Philip Curtin, Death by Migration: Europe’s Encounter with the Tropical World in the 19th Century (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1989).
- 14.
Acemoglu, Johnson and Robinson, “The Colonial Origins of Comparative Development”.
- 15.
Arthur Stinchcombe, Constructing Social Theories (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968); Paul Pierson, “Increasing Returns, Path Dependence, and the Study of Politics”, American Political Science Review, 94 (200): 251–67.
- 16.
Kenneth Kalu, “State-Society Relations, Institutional Transformation and Economic Development in Sub-Saharan Africa,” Development Policy Review, Vol. 35 (2017), O234–O245. https://doi.org/10.1111/dpr.12320.
- 17.
William Easterly and Ross Levine, “Africa’s Growth Tragedy: Politics and Ethnic Diversity”, Quarterly Journal of Economics, 112 no. 4, (1997): 1203–1250.
- 18.
Bloom, D. E. and Sachs, J. D. “Geography, Demography, and Economic Growth in Africa”, Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, 2, (1998): 207–273.
- 19.
Acemoglu and Robinson, Why Nations Fail.
- 20.
David Wallechinsky, Tyrants: The World’s 20 Worst Living Dictators (New York, NY: Harper Collins Publishers, 2006).
- 21.
Ibid.
- 22.
van der Walle, “Presidentialism and Clientelism in Africa’s Emerging Party Systems.”
- 23.
van de Walle, “Presidentialism and Clientelism.”
- 24.
Odd Arne Westad, The Global Cold War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007); Crawford Young, The African Colonial State in Comparative Perspective.
Bibliography
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Stinchcombe, Arthur. Constructing Social Theories. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968.
van de Walle, Nicolas. “Presidentialism and Clientelism in Africa’s Emerging Party Systems.” Journal of Modern African Studies, 42 no. 2 (2003): 297–32.
Wallechinsky, David. Tyrants: The World’s 20 Worst Living Dictators. New York, NY: Harper Collins Publishers, 2006.
Westad, Odd Arne. The Global Cold War. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
Young, Crawford. The African Colonial State in Comparative Perspective. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1994.
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Kalu, K., Falola, T. (2019). Introduction: Exploitation, Colonialism, and Postcolonial Misrule in Africa. In: Kalu, K., Falola, T. (eds) Exploitation and Misrule in Colonial and Postcolonial Africa. African Histories and Modernities. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96496-6_1
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