Africa's growth prospects in a European mirror : a historical perspective

Drawing on recent quantitative research on Europe reaching back to the medieval period, and noting a relationship between the quality of institutions and economic growth, this paper offers a reassessment of Africa’s growth prospects. Periods of positive growth driven by trade, followed by growth reversals which wiped out the gains of the previous boom, characterized pre-modern Europe as well as twentieth century Africa. Since per capita incomes in much of sub-Saharan Africa are currently at the level of medieval Europe, which did not make the breakthrough to modern economic growth until the nineteenth century, we caution against too optimistic a reading of Africa’s recent growth experience. Without the institutional changes necessary to facilitate structural change, growth reversals continue to pose a serious threat to African prosperity. Only if growth continues after a downturn in Africa’s terms of trade can we be sure that the corner has been turned

History matters in assessing African tax systems

In her book entitled Taxing Colonial Africa: The Political Economy of British Imperialism (Oxford University Press, 2012), LSE’s Leigh Gardner explores a much-neglected area of Africa’s economic past

Slavery, coercion, and economic development in Sub-Saharan Africa

Recent debates on the economic history of the United States and other regions have revisited the question of the extent to which slavery and other forms of labor coercion contributed to the development of economic and political institutions. This article aims to bring Africa into this global debate, examining the contributions of slavery and coercion to periods of economic growth during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It argues that the coercion of labor in a variety of forms was a key part of African political economy, and thus when presented with opportunities for growth, elites turned first to the expansion of coerced labor. However, while labor coercion could help facilitate short-run growth, it also made the transition to sustained growth more difficult

Lessons from Liberia in sovereignty and economic development

A central aim of many studies of African economic history has been why the transition to independence in the middle of the twentieth century did not lead to better economic outcomes. The economic struggles of African countries post-independence are often viewed through the lens of the Cold War. But as Leigh Gardner writes, Liberia’s experiences foreshadowed many of the same problems 50 years earlier

Africa’s recent economic success in a European mirror: a historical perspective on avoiding ‘growth reversals’ and achieving sustained growth

LSE’s Leigh Gardner and Stephen Broadberry examine European history for indications on how African countries can sustain the current economic boom

Experiences with Student Loan Debt: A Phenomenological Study of First-Generation, Low-Income College Graduates

First-generation and low-income (FGLI) individuals currently represent a large percentage of the total undergraduate student enrollment in U.S. colleges and universities. Student loan debt in the United States is also at an all-time high with approximately 43 million Americans sharing the $1.75 trillion total. Because FGLI individuals, like many other college students, often take on large amounts of student loan debt to successfully graduate college, it is worth learning more about the long-term effects that student loan debt has on the experiences of FGLI college graduates within the first ten years of graduating with a baccalaureate degree. The purpose of this phenomenological research study is to understand how FGLI college graduates experience student loan debt within the first ten years of graduating from a four-year, private institution. Utilizing a phenomenological approach allows participants the opportunity to describe both facets of the phenomenon – both the phenomenon itself and how they experienced it. The phenomenological approach is important, as it allows the essence of the shared experience to be discovered through the research

Economic growth in Sub-Saharan Africa, 1885–2008: evidence from eight countries

Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) has been absent from recent debates about comparative long-run growth owing to the lack of data on aggregate economic performance before 1950. This paper provides estimates of GDP per capita on an annual basis for eight Anglophone African economies for the period since 1885, raising new questions about previous characterizations of the region's economic performance. The new data show that many of these economies had levels of per capita income which were above subsistence by the early twentieth century, on a par with the largest economies in Asia until the 1980s. However, overall improvements in GDP per capita were limited by episodes of negative growth or “shrinking”, the scale and scope of which can be measured through annual data

How Africans shaped British colonial institutions: evidence from local taxation

The institutions that governed most of the rural population in British colonial Africa have been neglected in the literature on colonialism. We use new data on local governments, or "Native Authorities,"to present the first quantitative comparison of African institutions under indirect rule in four colonies in 1948: Nigeria, the Gold Coast, Nyasaland, and Kenya. Tax data show that Native Authorities' capacity varied within and between colonies, due to both underlying economic inequalities and African elites' relations with the colonial government. Our findings suggest that Africans had a bigger hand in shaping British colonial institutions than often acknowledged

From boom to bust: avoiding economic ‘growth reversals’ in Africa

African economies have grown rapidly over the past decade. But history shows that the pattern of growth and reversal which has characterised African economic performance in the post-war period can persist for centuries. If the current boom is to be different, African countries must develop institutions which allow people to specialise away from agriculture, and mitigate the impact of market failure

A tale of paper and gold: the material history money in South Africa

This paper uses the South African objects in the National Numismatic Collection of the Smithsonian to tell a new material history of money in South Africa. In other parts of the continent, research about the currencies in use and how these changed over time have offered a new perspective on the impact of colonialism, commercialisation, and the rise of state capacity. South Africa, and southern Africa more generally, has remained on the periphery of these debates. This paper begins to fill this gap. It shows that even in Africa’s most financially developed region, the process of establishing a stable national currency was long and halting, reflecting struggles over South Africa’s relationship with the global economy and the rise and fall of apartheid