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17 juin 2006

The Shackled Continent: Africa's Past, Present and Future

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The Shackled Continent: Africa's Past, Present and Future, by Robert Guest

Africa is the only continent to have grown poorer over the last three decades. Why?

The Shackled Continent seeks to diagnose the sickness that continues to hobble Africa's development. Using reportage, first hand experience and economic insight, Robert Guest takes us to the roots of the problems. Two fifths of African nations are at war, AIDS has lowered life expectancy to as young as forty years old and investment is almost impossible as houses that could be used as collateral do not formally belong to their owners. Most shocking of all is the evidence that the billions of dollars of aid, given to Africa has had little perceptible effect on the poor. The Shackled Continent offers, sometimes controversially, explanations for this state of affairs. The author examines the logic behind the chaos in Congo and the economic madness of Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe. With vivid reporting from big slums and small villages in Malawi, the book explains why so few Africans own their own homes. To illustrate how bad roads and bribe-hungry policemen affect African business, the author rides a beer truck into the Cameroonian rain forest, and is stopped at road-blocks forty-seven times.

This book by the Economist's African reporter is a well written guide to the reasons why Africa is the way it is now.

His conclusion is that it is because of poor leadership and that if that was improved everything would get better. He fails to explain why virtually every country south of the Sahara has such poor leaders though. This somewhat undermines his cautiously optimistic conclusions that Africa may be turning the corner. There are stories of hope here, too. Uganda, for example, has managed to curb the spread of AIDS. Botswana is peaceful and prosperous. South Africa, the continent’s economic engine, has avoided a full-blown civil war. Robert Guest puts such triumphs in a wider context, and asks why there are not more of them. This book provides an invigorating treatise on how Africa can wake from its slumbers. He examines the good results in countries that follow sound fiscal and monetary policies as opposed to the vampire state in places like Zimbabwe or the failed state in e.g. Congo. A very important point that Guest makes is that Africa can develop and improve the lives of its people without sacrificing its culture. Japanis proof enough that modernity does not necessarily threaten an indigenous culture. Guest discusses Rwanda 's holocaust and religious clashes in Nigeria, takes a balanced look at South Africa's successes and its failures like its lack of an AIDS policy and criticises western countries for their agricultural protectionism that is holding Africa back. More Western aid is not the answer, and in some places mineral wealth has been more of a curse than a blessing.

He makes a plea for increased trade and praises the stability that exists in those countries where property rights are respected. He also surveys the situation of the media, where both oppression and lack of money are impediments to a free press. The book ends on an optimistic note with the example of a young man in the KwaZulu province of South Africa having become a successful businessman after abandoning a life of violence.

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