MAY/JUNE 2008
“The impact of mobile technology in the developing world is staggering”
Ken Banks
Edward Miguel’s examination of sub-Saharan Africa’s economic development focuses on outside influences and interventions as the major economic forces affecting the region. Foreign aid, foreign direct investment, the colonial legacy, and so on: each plays a significant role in explaining the current status of the continent. Indeed, Miguel’s focus may simply be a reflection of what has emerged over the past forty or fifty years as the prevailing view of the African majority. According to this understanding, many Africans have been passive victims, or beneficiaries, of outside initiatives, lacking the money, tools, and resources to release their own economic shackles. I am not sure that this story was ever true.
This article has become a book!
Africa’s Turn?
Edward Miguel
Cloth / April 2009
“A refreshing take on the fortunes of Africa in the
current century and a fascinating compendium of some of the leading theorists of African development.” — Publishers Weekly
By the end of the twentieth century, sub–Saharan Africa had
experienced twenty–five years of economic and political disaster.
While “economic miracles” in China and India raised hundreds of
millions from extreme poverty, Africa seemed to have been overtaken by
violent conflict and mass destitution, and ranked lowest in the world
in just about every economic and social indicator.
Working in Busia, a small Kenyan border town, economist Edward Miguel
began to notice something different starting in 1997: modest but
steady economic progress, with new construction projects, flower
markets, shops, and ubiquitous cell phones. In Africa’s Turn? Miguel
tracks a decade of comparably hopeful economic trends throughout
sub–Saharan Africa and suggests that we may be seeing a turnaround.
Responding to Miguel, nine experts gauge his optimism: Olu Ajakaiye,
Ken Banks, Robert Bates, Paul Collier, Rachel Glennerster, Rosamond
Naylor, Smita Singh, David N. Weil, and Jeremy M. Weinstein.
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