The African Poor: A History

by John Iliffe

This is a book for all readers concerned with the future of Africa. The first history of the poor of Sub-Saharan Africa, it begins in the monasteries of thirteenth-century Ethiopia and ends in the South African resettlement sites of the 1980s. It provides a historical context for poverty in Africa--both the permanent poverty of the dispossessed and the temporary poverty of famine victims. Its thesis, modelled on the histories of poverty in Europe, is that most very poor Africans have been incapacitated for labor, bereft of support, and unable to fend for themselves in a land-rich economy. Dr. Iliffe investigates what it is like to be poor, how the poor seek to help themselves, how their families help, and how charitable and governmental institutions provide for them.

Genres: History

387 pages, Paperback

First published December 25, 1987

About the author

John Iliffe is Professor of African History at St. John's College, University of Cambridge.

Reviews

[Hananeel]

Never thought about poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa this way

[Krista McCarthy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Boring historical read but gives a much more nuanced understanding of African civilizations before Western imperialism. In the West we have two dueling and equally erroneous ways of viewing Africa before colonialism. Its either the myth of "merry Africa" where peaceful communities took care of each other and no one went without that was destroyed by the West or it is "the dark continent" rife with poverty and slavery and improved by colonialism. The author moves beyond these narratives to historical sources to discover that the treatment of the poor in Africa was as varied as the cultures of Africa. Used it to write a report on the roots of the Rwandan genocide, which is too often dismissed as "ancient tribal hatreds" of Africans or as coming about entirely as a result if transplanted white racism.