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Title Inequality regimes in Africa from pre-colonial times to the present
Full text https://research.wur.nl/en/publications/inequality-regimes-in-africa-from-pre-colonial-times-to-the-prese
Date 2023
Author(s) Frankema, E.H.P.; de Haas, M.A.; van Waijenburg, M.F.M.
Abstract While current levels of economic inequality in Africa receive ample attention from academics and policymakers, we know little about the long-run evolution of inequality in the region. Even the new and influential 'global inequality literature' that is associated with scholars like Thomas Piketty, Branko Milanovic, and Walter Scheidel has had little to say about Africa so far. This paper is a first effort to fill that void. Building on recent research in African economic history and utilizing the new theoretical frameworks of the global inequality literature, we chart the long-run patterns and drivers of inequality in Africa from the slave trades to the present. Our analysis dismantles mainstream narratives about the colonial roots of persistent high inequality in post-colonial Africa and shows that existing inequality concepts and theories need further calibration to account, among others, for the role of African slavery in the long-run emergence and vanishing of inequality regimes.
Subject(s) Life Science
Language en
Relation https://edepot.wur.nl/588650
Type of publication info:eu-repo/semantics/article; Article/Letter to editor; info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion
Format text/html
Source African Affairs (2023); ISSN: 0001-9909
Rights info:eu-repo/semantics/restrictedAccess; Wageningen University & Research
Identifier 10.1093/afraf/adad001
Repository Wageningen - University of Wageningen
Added to C-A: 2023-03-01;10:16:57