African Economic Development Evidence, Theory, and Policy

This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations.

Unevenness and inequalities form a central fact of African economic experiences. This book challenges conventional wisdoms about economic performance and possible policies for economic development in African countries, using the striking variation in economic performance as a starting point.

African Economic Development: Evidence, Theory, and Policy highlights not only difference between countries, but also variation within countries. It focuses on issues relating to gender, class, and ethnic identity, such as neo-natal mortality, school dropout, and horticultural and agribusiness exports. Variations in these areas point to opportunities for changing perfomance, reducing reducing inequalities, learning from other policy experiences, and escaping the ties of structure and the legacies of a colonial past.

African Economic Development rejects teleological illusions and Eurocentric prejudice, criticizing a range of orthodox and heterodox economists for their cavalier attitude to evidence. Instead, it shows that seeing the contradictions of capitalism for what they are - fundamental and enduring - may help policy officials protect themselves against the misleading idea that development can be expected to be a smooth, linear process, or that it would be if certain impediments were removed.

Drawing on decades of research and policy experience, this book combines careful use of available evidence from a range of African countries with economic insights to make the policy case for specific types of public sector investment.

Christopher Cramer, Professor of the Political Economy of Development, Department of Development Studies, SOAS, University of London,John Sender, Emeritus Professor of Economics, SOAS, University of London,Arkebe Oqubay, Minister and Coordinator of Economic Sectors and Senior Adviser to the Prime Minister of Ethiopia

Christopher Cramer is Professor of the Political Economy of Development at SOAS, University of London. He is a vice-chair of the Royal African Society, a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences, and chairs the Scientific Committee of the African Programme on Rethinking Development Economics (APORDE) based in South Africa. He is the author of Civil War is Not a Stupid Thing: Accounting for Violence in Developing Countries (2006, C. Hurst) and worked on the Fairtrade, Employment, and Poverty Reduction in Ethiopia and Uganda research project funded by DfID. He co-edited the Oxford Handbook of the Ethiopian Economy (2019, OUP) and the Oxford Handbook of Industrial Policy (2020, OUP). He has lived and worked in Mozambique and South Africa.

John Sender is an Emeritus Professor of Economics, SOAS, University of London. He began rural fieldwork in the 1970s, while lecturing at the University of Dar es Salaam. Later jobs included: Director of the African Studies Centre, University of Cambridge; Visiting Professor of Political Economy, Witwatersrand University; Senior Research Fellow, African Studies Centre, Leiden. He has advised the Federal Governments of Nigeria and Ethiopia. He has also worked with the Governments of Mozambique, Uganda, Sri Lanka and Vietnam, as well as Mandela's Presidential Commissions on Labour and on Rural Credit. Early books include: Imperialism (1980); The Development of Capitalism in Africa (1986); Poverty, class and gender in rural Africa: a Tanzanian case study (1990).
Arkebe Oqubay is a Senior Minister and Special Adviser to the Prime Minister of Ethiopia and has been at the centre of policymaking for over twenty-five years. He is a research associate at the Centre of African Studies in the University of London, and holds a PhD in development studies from SOAS, University of London. He is the former mayor of Addis Ababa and winner of the ABN Best African Mayor of 2006, and finalist for the World Mayor Award 2006. He is a recipient of the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold and Silver Star and serves as board chair of several leading public organizations and international advisory boards. His work includes Made in Africa: Industrial Policy in Ethiopia (OUP, 2015); African Economic Development: Evidence, Theory, and Policy (OUP, 2019); and China-Africa and an Economic Transformation (2019, OUP). He was recognized as one of the 100 Most Influential Africans of 2016, and a 'leading thinker on Africa's strategic development' by the New African.

Part One: Introduction and Context
1. Introduction: A Fresh Outlook on Evidence, Analysis, and Policy for Economic Development in Africa
2. Uneven, Brutal, and Contradictory Economic Development in Africa
3. Varieties of Common Sense
Part Two: Strategies of Economic Development
4. Investment, Wage Goods, and Industrial Policy
5. The Trade Imperative
6. Unbalanced Development
Part Three: Poverty, Labour, and Agricultural Productivity
7. Wage Employment in Africa
8. Working Out the Solution to Rural Poverty
9. Technical Change and Agricultural Productivity
Part Four: Towards Possibilism in Policy Making
10. High Yielding Variety Policies in Africa
11. References