Out of Africa

Our fascination with Africa is matched by our ignorance. I say this from experience. When I was 19, I spent the summer of 1962 in Senegal, seduced by the excitement of the newly independent state, by the drums, by the colours, by the noise, by the markets, by the promise of an infinite future, by the magic. And yet, four years later, when it came time to pick a topic for a doctoral dissertation in development economics, I sadly decided to look elsewhere than Africa, because I knew so little about it and had no realistic chance of altering that unfortunate condition.

Half a century has passed, and much has changed. The decades have brought rapid political, economic and cultural developments in sub-Saharan Africa, including both fulfillment and betrayal of the promises inherent in the independence movements. Still, some things have not changed. Although we have access to much more data and scholarship than we did 50 years ago, we still struggle to understand the most...