Our Continent, Our Future presents the emerging African perspective on this complex issue. The authors use as background their own extensive experience and a collection of 30 individual studies, 25 of which were from African economists, to summarize this African perspective and articulate a path for the future. They underscore the need to be sensitive to each country's unique history and current condition. They argue for a broader policy agenda and for a much more active role for the state within what is largely a market economy. Finally, they stress that Africa must, and can, compete in an increasingly globalized world and, perhaps most importantly, that Africans must assume the leading role in defining the continent's development agenda.

This open access textbook offers a critical introduction to human and economic development prospects in Africa revolving around three questions: where is Africa today, what explains the current state, and, given historical trends and what we know about the world, where do we think the continent will be in 2040? And, a final question: what can we do to create a better tomorrow? It models ambitious progress in health, demographics, agriculture, education, industrialization, technological leapfrogging, increased trade, greater stability, better governance and external support. The book reviews the future of work/jobs, poverty and the impact of climate change. A combined Closing the Gap scenario presents a forecast of what could be possible by 2040. Each chapter suggests which policies might accelerate prospects for each sector. Written in an accessible style, and supported by a range of pedagogical features, this textbook introduces undergraduate and graduate students to the contemporary human and economic development prospects in Africa.

The emerging African prespective on the complex issue of structural adjustment is here analysed. It answers the major challenge for Africans themselves to lead the reform process which has been dominated by external ideas and models. The editors, two of Africa's top scholars, provide a succinct yet comprehensive synthesis of the adjustment debate from a truly African perspective, supported by thirty individual studies, twenty-five of which are from top economists and scholars from every corner of Africa. For decades now, many African countries have implemented the structural adjustment programs of the Bretton Woods Institution. And yet extreme poverty and underdevelopment continue to plague what is becoming the world's forgotten continent. Responding to this need for a new approach from within, the editors articulate a path for the future, underscoring the need to be sensitive to each other's unique history and current condition. They argue for a broader policy agenda and for a much more active role for the state within what is largely a market economy.

Compiled in response to the World Bank's controversial two-volume evaluation study on Adjustment in Africa' and the need for critical appraisal of the Structural Adjustment Programme's development strategies, the essays included here touch on issues which have been accorded very little attention in the SAP framework, as well as those which have generated the most controversy. These include an evaluation of the methodologies for performance evaluation under SAP, financial sector reforms and resource mobilisation, poverty under adjustment, trade liberalisation, and more.'

“An impressive synthesis of current literature in African history, making it understandable and relevant.” —Jan Bender Shetler, author of Imagining Serengeti: A History of Landscape Memory in Tanzania from Earliest Times to the Present Africa’s Past, Our Future engages the history of the African continent through the perspective of global issues such as political instability, economic development, and climate change. Since the past may offer alternative models for thinking about our collective future, this book promotes an appreciation for African social, economic, and political systems that have endured over the long-term and that offer different ways of thinking about a sustainable future. Introducing readers to the wide variety of sources from which African history is constructed, the book’s ten chapters cover human evolution, the domestication of plants and animals, climate change, social organization, the slave trade and colonization, development, and contemporary economics and politics. “Smythe not only provides an excellent survey of the latest research on Africa’s past, she also presents a concise and clear argument as to why this history is relevant today.” ?African Studies Review “Recommended.” ?Choice “Grapples with the narratives and facts and where they fit in global perspective, but why this is all salient and critically meaningful to our lives today in terms of lessons we can learn and ideas we can borrow. This is a unique approach not yet available on the market.” ?Catherine Cymone Fourshey, Susquehanna University

In Africa Unchained , George Ayittey takes a controversial look at Africa's future and makes a number of daring suggestions. Looking at how Africa can modernize, build, and improve their indigenous institutions which have been castigated by African leaders as 'backward and primitive', Ayittey argues that Africa should build and expand upon these traditions of free markets and free trade. Asking why the poorest Africans haven't been able to prosper in the Twenty-first-century, Ayittey makes the answer obvious: their economic freedom was snatched from them. War and conflict replaced peace and the infrastructure crumbled. In a book that will be pondered over and argued about as much as his previous volumes, Ayittey looks at the possibilities for indigenous structures to revive a troubled continent.

Africa is a fast-changing continent and an area of rising global relevance, where major transformation processes are currently underway, from demographic expansion to economic development, from social progress to environmental challenges, from technological innovation to continental integration, from political change to migratory pressures. How will these complex transformations shape the Africa of tomorrow? This Report sets out a vision for Africa’s future based on five key traits: an archipelago of heterogeneous growth trajectories; the revolutionary impact of technological leapfrogging; regional integration and the growing role of sub-regional processes; the clustering of instability mainly around the core of the region; and the migration movements that originate from – but also predominantly remain within – the African continent.