AFST592 - HISTORY OF AFRICAN POLITICAL ECONOMY

This graduate student course takes a multi-disciplinary approach to the study of African Political Economy. While the course is grounded in the discipline of history, it seeks to prepare students to actively engage with the social sciences, in particular economics, political science, and anthropology. The study of Africa's economic past has moved through many different waves, after an initial burst of scholarship, during the 1860's and 1970's, which dealt with questions such as how Africa was integrated into the world economy, and the causes of wealth and prosperity, the field began to grapple with questions of governance in the 1990s. These questions took two forms. The first approach from political science argued that an analysis of the behavior of political institutions held the key to understanding Africa's economic performance, and the second aproach coming out of anthropology questioned the legitimacy of the development of disocurse itself. Within the last ten years economists have returned to the study of Africa's past, borrowing a focus on African states' institutions to tackle long running questions such as why Africa is poorer than other regions of the world.