“A call to arms in the class struggle for racial equity”—the hugely influential work of political theory and history, now powerfully introduced by Angela Davis (Los Angeles Review of Books). This legendary classic on European colonialism in Africa stands alongside C.L.R. James’ Black Jacobins, Eric Williams’ Capitalism & Slavery, and W.E.B. Dubois’ Black Reconstruction. In his short life, the Guyanese intellectual Walter Rodney emerged as one of the leading thinkers and activists of the anticolonial revolution, leading movements in North America, South America, the African continent, and the Caribbean. In each locale, Rodney found himself a lightning rod for working class Black Power. His deportation catalyzed 20th century Jamaica's most significant rebellion, the 1968 Rodney riots, and his scholarship trained a generation how to think politics at an international scale. In 1980, shortly after founding of the Working People's Alliance in Guyana, the 38-year-old Rodney would be assassinated. In his magnum opus, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, Rodney incisively argues that grasping "the great divergence" between the west and the rest can only be explained as the exploitation of the latter by the former. This meticulously researched analysis of the abiding repercussions of European colonialism on the continent of Africa has not only informed decades of scholarship and activism, it remains an indispensable study for grasping global inequality today.

How Europe Underdeveloped Africa is an ambitious masterwork of political economy, detailing the impact of slavery and colonialism on the history of international capitalism. In this classic book, Rodney makes the unflinching case that African maldevelopment is not a natural feature of geography, but a direct product of imperial extraction from the continent, a practice that continues up into the present. Meticulously researched, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa remains an unshakably relevant study of the so-called "great divergence" between Africa and Europe, just as it remains a prescient resource for grasping the the multiplication of global inequality today. In this new edition, Angela Davis offers a striking foreword to the book, exploring its lasting contributions to a revolutionary and feminist practice of anti-imperialism.

The classic work of political, economic, and historical analysis, powerfully introduced by Angela Davis In his short life, the Guyanese intellectual Walter Rodney emerged as one of the leading thinkers and activists of the anticolonial revolution, leading movements in North America, South America, the African continent, and the Caribbean. In each locale, Rodney found himself a lightning rod for working class Black Power. His deportation catalyzed 20th century Jamaica's most significant rebellion, the 1968 Rodney riots, and his scholarship trained a generation how to think politics at an international scale. In 1980, shortly after founding of the Working People's Alliance in Guyana, the 38-year-old Rodney would be assassinated. In his magnum opus, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, Rodney incisively argues that grasping "the great divergence" between the west and the rest can only be explained as the exploitation of the latter by the former. This meticulously researched analysis of the abiding repercussions of European colonialism on the continent of Africa has not only informed decades of scholarship and activism, it remains an indispensable study for grasping global inequality today.

Half a century after independence poverty and disease continues to ravage more than 70% of the inhabitants of the most resource rich continent of the world. State corruption persists as the only industry with steady growth while those that should offer employment to the majority inhabitants of the continent are on the decline. How Africa Underdevelops Africa presents an exegesis of how corruption and its numerous effects are playing out in Africa. With the myth of Asias rise here demystified, Africa has no longer just the Western world to learn from, it could and should necessarily borrow from the social capital values of the East to ensure even distribution of the wealth which at the present rests with an avaricious few who with their cronies tag themselves leaders of Africa.

Hirji makes a case that Rodney's seminal work retains its value for understanding where Africa has come from, where it is going, and charting the path towards genuine development for its people. It is a succinct, coherent defence of an intellectual giant who lived and died for humanity, an essential read for anyone interested in Africa.

Extracting profit explains why Africa, in the first decade and a half of the twenty-first century, has undergone an economic boom. This period of “Africa rising” did not lead to the creation of jobs but has instead fueled the growth of the extraction of natural resources and an increasingly-wealthy African ruling class.