HOW AFRICA WORKS, success and failure on the world's last developmental frontier

435pp., map, paperback, Profile Books, London, 2026

ISBN: 9781805226772

In this radical reassessment of Africa's developmental history, economist Joe Studwell debunks long-held views about the continent's presumed resistance to growth, describing huge changes in government, demography and resource management over the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

Considering factors from slavery and the fall of settler colonialism to population density, soil conditions, mineral extraction and disease eradication, he argues that the seizing back of land, people and states across Africa has resulted in mass economic development.

"A powerful contribution that is foundational to our understanding of Africa's future" Jakkie Cilliers, Chairman of the Institute of Security Studies, South Africa

"This insightful volume does something unusual: it constructs a thesis of Africa's developmental backdrop that neither relies on familiar ideological paradigms, not fixates on traditional bogeymen like corruption and civil conflict. It will doubtless inspire debate, which is by itself an important achievement." Vice President Kashim Shettima of Nigeria

Researcher and consultant Joe Studwell is the Senior Visiting Fellow at the Overseas Development Institute in London, and holds a PhD in global business and development from the University of Cambridge. His previous books include How Asia Works and The China Dream.