Shortlisted for the 2025 BCA African Business Book of the Year

For centuries, do-gooding Westerners have tried to ‘fix’ African countries. Missionaries, philanthropists and NGOs have arrived on the continent, full of good intentions and bad ideas.

Historian Bronwen Everill argues that these interventions always made the same mistake: they assumed that Africa needs to be more like the West. Ignoring the continent’s history, Europeans and Americans had faith that one size would fit all, and set about applying Western ideas about growth, debt, unemployment and more – with disastrous consequences.

By exposing the myths and realities of our entangled history, Africonomics is the wake-up call the West needs.