Africonomics: A History of Western Ignorance: A History of Western Ignorance

by Bronwen Everill

'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 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.

*Shortlisted for the BCA African Business Book of the Year*

Genres: Nonfiction, Economics, Africa

Audible Audio

Published October 10, 2024

Reviews

[Christy Matthews · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was really hopeful for this book, but too much of it is anecdotes and biological information on certain, primarily European, individuals. There were less key takeaways and guidance than I would like to see in a developmental economics book.

[Tana · Rating 3 out of 5]

With BRICS taking off, this really interested me. Overall not a bad book. Could have been much shorter.

Introduction
Interesting backstory that starts in Liberia. I had no idea that Liberia was "colonised" by formerly enslaved people who had moved from the USA to Liberia, which created an unequal society between the indigenous Africans and those that arrived from the US with their western connections and ideals. The author then discusses the differences between Sierra Leone and Liberia.

1. A King with no Holey Stockings, or Measuring Wealth
Introduces Anna Maria Falconbridge who (around 1790s) sheds light on the European view of Africa, from her meeting at Naimbana with King of the Temne and his court. What these Europeans observe as "backwards" isn't so different to the systems in Europe, only that Europeans put value on things that Africans don't. Such as wearing expensive garments, which for the Africans is worn as homage for their European guests but for Anna, she notices holes in the stockings and mud huts for homes (in my opinion these Africans were ahead of the curve in building environmentally friendly homes and not wearing fast fashion).

2. Learning to be Farmers
Introduces Thomas Fowell Buxton, a "philanthropist" who believed that the opening of a good economy was the natural result of good economy, and thus the slave trade, which suppressed all other trade was a detriment to Africa's progress and development giving too much power to despotic African leaders. He prosed property rights, which was a very poor understanding of African understanding of land (which was more communal guardianship with tribal leaders) and using the Royal navy to set up model farms, petitioning Parliament in the 1830s.
Compares the weavers of Spitalfields, Victorian workhouses and enslaved labour.
Introduces Obi Ossai, who was unsure on how to transition away from the slave trade without his people suffering. The same problem was faced by Mohammed Bello (born in 1791), who founded the Sokoto Caliphate that covered Burkina Faso to Chad, to northern Cameroon with a population between 10 to 20 million people. The solution for the latter was to create frontier colonies that focused on Agriculture, which resulted in the increase of cotton production. Slaves were still used but were not sold to the Atlantic but worked for Africans.

3. Getting People Back to Work
Once slavery ends, the owners of wealth discover that people aren't keen to work all hours, which lead to some such as Thomas Carlyle and John Stuart Mill to debate whether Africans were inherently lazy, and French colonial administrators justified the use of compulsory labour by suggesting as such. This belief led to Europeans moving to the colonies to seek wealth and high wages and the natives to expect lower wages.
Introduction to Missionaries and their role in Africa, they themselves saw their role as moderating European commercial excesses.

4. Money Problems
Introduces Richard Burton, who in 1883 arrived in the Gold Coast where he set up a mining venture that was little more than a pyrmid scheme. The Africans, whom he considered himself to be intellectually superior had their comeuppance on him.
Introduces commodities trading, which was a credit system. The Africans traded cowrie shells with each other, that the Westerners considered primative form of bartering. But the Western system of IOUs was not as stable or much different. And the value of a dollar prior to the (US) National Baking Act of 1863 would depend on which bank issued it, the distance to exchange that dollar to that bank etc. Trading in Cowries was common from Zanzibar to the Maldives.
1860s & 1870s, the humanitarians were concerned by cheap imports being dumped in Africa as a result of the Industrial Revolution. Eventually, these so-called concerns led to the withdrawal of indigenous currencies such as the cowrie.

5. Unequal Development
In 1927 R Batten set out for Nigeria with hopes to improve the lives of Africans. His idea rested on two premises: a universalistic understanding of what "economic development" entailed, and a particular idea about the kinds of government that were able to achieve it.
The frustration of Ugandan farmers as the Indians, who were the middlemen and moeylenders.

6. Financing Freedom
1944 Bretton Woods conference, where 44 countries were represented but not any of them present were black Africans. The colonial powers represented the countries in Africa.
In 1960, Egyptian economist Samir Amen arrived in Bamako, Mali. He found that he was struggling against World Bank nonsense and flawed data.

7. Helping You to Get Rich Quick
In 1995, Oxfarm released an annual report calling out the Bretton Woods institutions for their preference for "laissez-faire" policies that promoted trickle-down economies. Market solutions did not solve poverty in a system where state debts made investment in the poor impossible.
Discusses get-rich-quick schemes and crypto.

8. Women are Nothing More than Slaves
Amount the Triv in Nigeria or the Maradi in Niger, it was the man who had to pay to marry a woman (unlike Mr Bennet from Pride & Prejudice who had the "burden" of 5 daughter to marry off). Women were valued in African society unlike pre-Industrial Age Western society.
It was Victorian (western) ideals that separated women's domestic labour from men's that caused inequality.

Epilogue: How to Think Differently About African Economics
Thomas Sankara born in 1949 was the son of a policeman in the French colony then known as Upper Volta (Burkina Faso). He was big in anti-corruption and press freedom. He stated how Africa helped European postwar rebuilding. He also pointed out how aid had kept Africa poor as the leaders who received the aid were prioritising international commitments over domestic.
Overall, a lack of understanding of Africa by Westerners who thought they knew better led to the damage in Africa's economy.

[Theni · Rating 5 out of 5]

So much to learn, so much underlined, so much to revisit. This book resonates even more when you work in the humanitarian/development sector and seeing some of the patterns repeating TODAY. Sending the local to front the operation, short experience in a confined context becoming the blueprint for an African policy, the sheer ignorance that the problem we are trying to solve might have already been solved elsewhere.

I was fascinated about learning about currencies and how they evolved, origin of the modern credit system, hut taxes, and how development was also a way to maintain territory post-Berlin conference. Because the philosophy is - if you are not using it, then its up for the taking. Explains a lot about why people felt they had to "take Africa"

[Ace · Rating 5 out of 5]

As an undergrad economics student, I have had an instinctual feeling that there is something wrong with our courses, and this book clearly and accurately puts that into words. The analysis and examples are enlightening, turning western economics theory on its head while revealing the origins of ideas we hold as immutable. Very interesting read.

[Suzammah · Rating 2 out of 5]

This wasn’t quite what I was expecting. I wanted more analysis from an African perspective but what I largely got was anecdotes within a European structure. There were some interesting chapters, particularly around the economics of the end of slavery and state formation, but much left unexplored.

[Marco · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting historical accounts that have provided me with a clearer picture of economic interventions, their underlying misperceptions and detrimental short- and long-term consequences. Writing style was not always the easiest for me (e.g. a lot of „side stories“).