The Shackled Continent [Hardcover]

In this captivating book, the author shares his experiences of Sub-Saharan Africa by exploring the reasons for the region's abject poverty and suffering. Guest takes into account factors like for example climate and history, whilst quoting African writers like Chinua Achebe, Themba Sono and Chenjerai Hove.

The text often focuses on rays of hope amidst the despair so the book is not a relentless tale of woe. Guest identifies negative issues like tribalism and corruption and the waste of aid money while pointing out positive developments in places like Botswana, South Africa, Uganda and Senegal.

He examines the good results in countries that follow sound fiscal and monetary policies as opposed to the vampire state in places like Zimbabwe or the failed state in e.g. Congo (Zaire). A very important point that Guest makes is that Africa can develop and improve the lives of its people without sacrificing its culture. Japan is proof enough that modernity does not necessarily threaten an indigenous culture.

Guest discusses Rwanda's holocaust and religious clashes in Nigeria, takes a balanced look at South Africa's successes and its failures like its lack of an AIDS policy and criticises western countries for their agricultural protectionism that is holding Africa back. More Western aid is not the answer, and in some places mineral wealth has been more of a curse than a blessing.

He makes a plea for increased trade and praises the stability that exists in those countries where property rights are respected. He also surveys the situation of the media, where both oppression and lack of money are impediments to a free press. The book ends on an optimistic note with the example of a young man in the KwaZulu province of South Africa having become a successful businessman after abandoning a life of violence.

The book concludes with bibliographic notes and an index. The Shackled Continent can be heartbreaking at times, but the overall tone is optimistic, and realistically so. The book leaves an impression of hope and the reader can only pray that good government may soon come to Africa. The title of South Africa's national anthem by Enoch Sontonga, says it all: Nkosi sikelele i'Afrika, meaning God bless Africa.

Robert Guest is a skilled writer with a great deal of journalistic experience from the Economist magazine's Africa desk. His book is therefore well written in snappy prose and peppered with informative insight.

However, like the Economist itself, Guest's book suffers from an ideological bias akin to religious fervor, waxing lyrical about capitalism's undeniable theoretical strengths and real-world success stories while dismissing or glossing over its failings, if mentioned at all, in single sentences. Guest talks about unbridled capitalism almost as if it were a magic bullet to solve the world's problems. Like the Economist, this faith seems founded on a precocious though superlative command of GCSE economics.

For example, in talking about people who work as security guards as being 'the least intelligent', Guest wrongly infers an exclusive relationship between social status and intelligence. Similarly, in assuming that the products of elite institutions and professions are the best and brightest, Guest wrongly conflates 'most intelligent' with 'most socially advantaged'. We need look no further than Yale's presidential alumni, or the City of London, to see that the highest paid graduates of the world's top universities are not as clever as Guest seems to believe.

While sub-Saharan Africa has undoubtedly become much poorer since independence, Guest's reliance on per capita GDP as a measure of wealth fails to take into account median incomes or purchasing power parity - for example he cites central America as a capitalist success story while failing to mention that GDP growth there has been massively concentrated in the hands of small oligarchy while the social dislocation resultant of unbridled capitalism has seen violent crime in countries such as Mexico rocket. Similarly, the USA has seen steady per capita GDP growth over the past thirty years while wages have stagnated and educational inflation has put an good college education beyond the reach of many middle class Americans.

For all that, Guest does make a lot of very valid simple observations about what is wrong with Africa, primarily that many African leaders continue to blame the West for the continent's glaring failings and refuse to take responsibility for their failure to provide the very basics of a functional nation-state (i.e. basic law and order, education, infrastructure and health care), while the West's primary modern failing lies not in a lack of aid but in its continued undermining of Africa's primary export potential by blocking African farmers from Western markets through tariffs and domestic subsidies (such as the French led EU 'Common Agricultural Policy').

Guest's book is an entertaining and informative read, but as a capitalist polemic it should be read critically.

This book by the Economist's African reporter is a fantastically well written guide to the reasons why Africa is the way it is now. His conclusion is that it is because of poor leadership and that if that was improved everything would get better. He fails to explain why virtually every country south of the Sahara has such poor leaders. This somewhat undermines his cautiously optimistic conclusions that Africa may be turning the corner.

Personally I think he is correct in his diagnosis but wrong in his conclusion and that Africa's decline will continue. There have been many false dawns in Africa and each of them have been followed by a darker night. This will not change and Africa will become globally more irrelevent except as a reason for the rich world to indulge in hand wringing.

Buy this book if you truly want to understand modern Africa. Also it is beautifully written and highly informative while be entertaining.