Africa's Development in Historical Perspective

Download or read book Africa's Development in Historical Perspective written by Emmanuel Akyeampong and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2014-08-11 with total page 541 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why has Africa remained persistently poor over its recorded history? Has Africa always been poor? What has been the nature of Africa's poverty and how do we explain its origins? This volume takes a necessary interdisciplinary approach to these questions by bringing together perspectives from archaeology, linguistics, history, anthropology, political science, and economics. Several contributors note that Africa's development was at par with many areas of Europe in the first millennium of the Common Era. Why Africa fell behind is a key theme in this volume, with insights that should inform Africa's developmental strategies.