'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 premise: 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*

In this non-fiction masterpiece, Sunday Times bestselling author Bronwen Everill explores the social and international trade aspects of emerging and developing African economies. She challenges the Western-centric view, advocating for a recognition and appreciation of African economic thought.

For fans of Melinda Gates (The Moment of Lift), Michael Bhaskar (The Oxford Handbook of Publishing), Scott Galloway (Notes on Being a Man), Daron Acemoglu (The Narrow Corridor), and Ian Williams (The Fire of the Dragon).

HarperCollins 2024

Africonomics: A History of Western Ignorance

Africonomics: A History of Western Ignorance