CRG seminar: How Africa Works

Most literature on the lacklustre economic development of Africa since the 1960s focuses on failures of governance (Van de Valle 2001, Bates 2008, Reno 1998), corruption (Bayart 1993, Collier 2000), and ethnic conflict (Easterly and Levine 1997, Eifert, Miguel and Posner 2009). Joe Studwell’s How Africa Works challenges these interpretations, arguing that it was demographics – and particularly low demographic density and the absence of large urban centres – that more powerfully undermined possibilities for growth. Only since population expansion took off with the first effective controls of Africa’s virulent disease burden in the 1950s did economic opportunity begin to appear. However, African states still had to spend decades educating populations that were the most illiterate and innumerate in the world. It is only today – as population density in 2026 approaches that of Asia in 1960 – that African growth rates have picked up to levels associated with ‘normal’ developing countries. Joe will show that the demographic lens is the clearest one through which to view African development.

This seminar is given by Dr Joe Studwell and organised by the Collaborative Research Group Governance, entrepeneurship and inclusive development.