The Economic History of Africa: Renaissance or False Dawn?

Abstract

Though it is currently benefiting from a renewal of interest, the economic history of Africa raises intense methodological controversies that are echoed in two books recently published by Morten Jerven, Poor Numbers and Africa: Why Economists Get It Wrong. A large proportion of these controversies relate more generally to the differences between economists and historians, at least in terms of their dominant practices. In its quest for the institutional “fundamentals” of economic development, much research in this field is content to work with a summary and imperfect base of data, an approach that Jerven is right to criticize. Analyses often suffer from an insufficient knowledge of social contexts, and compress historical time between a “before” and a “now.” They also rely on debatable statistical assumptions. Nevertheless, though extant archives present limitations that are both qualitative (the sources are predominantly colonial) and quantitative, a modest renaissance remains a possibility and would offer more space for better controlled comparative analyses.

Why Africa is not that poor

“…Several reviews have appeared in the past decade, including a recent one by Michalopoulos and Papaioannou (2020) which is more extensive than mine, but adopts a different categorization (see also Nunn 2009;Fenske 2012;Fourie 2016;Fourie & Obikili 2019). I will also largely refrain from discussing the methodological boundaries between the historical economics and economic history of Africa, apart from noting that there is substantial overlap, cross-fertilization as well as some outspoken heuristic antagonism (Hopkins 2009, Fenske 2012, Akyeampong et al 2014, Austin and Broadberry 2014, Cogneau 2016. 5 The persistence studies as such have been criticized from many sidesand not just by professional historians.…”

“…There is much more work done by political scientists on the nexus between ethnicity, conflict and public goods provision, for which I refer to the survey byMichalopoulos and Papaioannou (2020).16 For critique on the use of nightlight as a proxy for regional income, seeCogneau and Dupraz 2014, Bickenbach et al 2016. See also Chen and Nordhaus for the original warning that luminosity data have high measurement error and cannot be used in all settings (2011, p. 8594).…”