Christopher Ondaatje

Developing the Dark Continent

The Shackled Continent: Africa's Past, Present and Future

By

Macmillan 280pp £20 order from our bookshop

ANYONE WHO WANTS to be reminded of the horrors of Africa, economic or otherwise, will be interested to read this intelligent but light treatise by Robert Guest, the Africa editor of The Economist. In The Shackled Continent he sets out to explain, as the jacket blurb neatly states, why ‘Africa is the only continent to have grown poorer over the last three decades’. In order to do so, he must answer a number of subsidiary questions: ‘Why are so many African nations at war? Why has Aids affected Africa so much more than any other region? . . . Why are so many African governments corrupt, inept and despotic? Why has foreign aid proved such a failure?’

Sign Up to our newsletter

Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.

Follow Literary Review on Twitter

  • Last Tweets

    • The author 'seethes with contemptuous indignation at the shiny junk that an unregulated construction industry dumps… ,
    • 'The physical courage he demonstrated as a young man [...] gave way to intellectual power; radical thought, gifted… ,
    • 'While Jane Austen didn’t perhaps achieve the full recognition that she deserved in her lifetime, even then she out… ,
    • 'All I have is a voice To undo the folded lie, The romantic lie in the brain Of the sensual man-in-the-street And t… ,
    • 'You are interested in a particular subject; basic research hardens this interest into an obsession, after which th… ,
    • 'Keynes predicted that future generations would enjoy such an improved standard of living that they might work just… ,
    • 'Various dislocations ... emerge, iceberg-like, out of a troubled sea of unconscious motivation and confront Eisenb… ,
    Follow Us