George Ayittey’s Indigenous African Institutions presents a detailed and convincing picture of pre-colonial and post-colonial Africa - its cultures, traditions, and indigenous institutions, including participatory democracy.

In the attempt to establish institutions which foster economic development in the third world, economists often look to the West as a model. This indeed has been the case in Ghana, West Africa. In Ghana s urban centers, the large buildings which house Barclay s Bank, Standard Charter Bank, and Ghana Commercial Bank loom over the traditional market stalls and street traders. This sight might be heartening to those who recognize third world entrepreneurs limited access to capital as the primary constraint in advancing economic development. Indeed, these institutions play an important role in financing large scale industry and high volume import and export exchange. But this is only a small proportion of market activity in Ghana, The majority of business people never enter the doors of such institutions.

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.

For most of its history, the African continent has witnessed momentous political change, remarkable philosophical innovation, and the complex cross-fertilization of ideologies and belief systems. This definitive study surveys the concepts, values, and historical upheavals that have shaped African political systems from the ancient period to the postcolonial era and beyond. Beginning with the emergence of indigenous political institutions, it traces the most important developments in African history, including the Africanization of Islam, liberal democratic movements, socialism, Pan-Africanism, and Africanist-Populist resistance to the neoliberal world order. The result is an invaluable resource on a region too often ignored in the history of political thought.

Offers a historical, multidisciplinary perspective on African political systems and institutions, ranging from Antiquity (Egypt, Kush and Axum) to the present with particular focus on their destruction through successive exogenous processes including the Atlantic slave trade, imperialism, colonialism and neo-colonialism or globalization.