The Shackled Continent: Power, Corruption, and African Lives

Melinda Ammann reviews Robert Guest's The Shackled Continent, why he asks is “Africa is the only continent to have grown poorer over the last three decades.” After six years of covering the continent’s civil wars, genocide, famine, and disastrous monetary policies, his answer boils down to this: Africans are poor because they are poorly governed...One of the reasons that Africa is so poor,” Guest explains, “is that most Africans are unable to turn their assets into liquid capital. In the West, the most common way to do this is to borrow money using a house as security. This is how most American entrepreneurs get started..."
Via ReasonOnline