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Book Review: The Shackled Continent
Henry Hamburger
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The Shackled Continent (Robert Guest, 2004; Pan Books, paperback, 2005) takes aim at political oppression, cronyism and the imposition of misguided economic policy as the principal culprits slowing or reversing the growth of (sub-Saharan) African economies. It thereby downrates - though it does not ignore - the terms of trade in the global economy and the historical role of colonial machinations. I found this book annoying yet worth reading. On the positive side, the author has paid his journalistic dues, creatively pursuing interviews with a wide range of economic actors in a wide range of African economies, sometimes putting himself at some risk to obtain information and punchy quotes. On the other hand, as he notes in the 2005 epilogue to the paperback edition, the book has offended a lot of people, one reviewer calling it 'arrogant, blinkered, self-righteous [and] casually offensive.' What is particularly casual, in my view, is his unquestioning and unanalyzed adoption of selected ideas from economics. This is a book about economies, written by an author for The Economist, but no claim is made for training, scholarship or research credentials in economics. At the risk of cuteness, I would call him an 'economist' in the sense of practicing an ideology of 'economism,' a faith in the kind of unfettered labor markets that allow sweatshops and the mindless deregulation that has allowed the current debacle in the American banking and housing sectors. Still, those of us who are trying to figure out what TEAA can most usefully do to assist secondary education in East Africa would do well to contemplate our role in the context of the on-the-ground anecdotes in this book. |