Inequality in Africa
Political Elites, Proletariat, Peasants and the Poor

This 1988 analysis argues that reducing inequality requires democratising political participation as well as economic control.

E. Wayne Nafziger (Author)

9780521317030, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 25 August 1988

220 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.3 cm, 0.33 kg

This study of inequality in Africa, first published in 1988, not only rejected the orthodox approach of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, which neglected income distribution and advocated greater external economic reliance, but also the statist Lagos Plan of Action, which supported comprehensive planning, large capital-intensive state firms, and increased government intervention in peasant prices. Wayne Nafziger's political economy analysis shows how the colonial legacy, the contemporary global economic system, and the ruling elites' policies of co-opting labour, favouring urban areas, distributing benefits communally, and spending on education to maintain inter-generational class exacerbate discrepancies between regions, urban and rural areas, and bourgeoisie and workers, even under 'African socialism'. The author's policy discussion eschews technoeconomic solutions, arguing that reducing inequality requires democratising political participation as well as economic control.

List of figures and tables
Acknowledgements
Glossary
Abbreviations
Map
1. Equality and growth: tradeoff or interlink?
2. Research without statistics: what are the questions?
3. African incomes in global perspective
4. The great descent: inequality and immiserisation
5. The colonial roots
6. Transnational relationships
7. Capitalism, socialism, development and inequality
8. The ruling class and the people: conflict and discrepancies
9. Workers, the unemployed, peasants and women
10. Maintaining class: the role of education
11. Urban bias and rural poverty
12. Catching the Nigerian disease: the ruling class and exchange rates
13. Regional and ethnic inequality
14. Income distribution in the late twentieth century
Notes
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Political economy [KCP]