Why does it keep going wrong in so many parts of sub-Saharan Africa? In this book-length essay, Patrick Chabal, a prominent Africanist at King’s College, London, extends his answers to this question appearing in his earlier writings. Rejecting current academic accounts as exhausted and prone to portray Africans as mere victims lacking their own agency, he pursues “at eye level” an eclectic theoretical method.

He traces bad politics and weak economics to deep-running cultural patterns, many of them recently re-invented to serve elite interests. Particularly for Africa’s large and growing population of young people, he sees a continuing descent into dehumanizing, politically-inspired brutality. Yet even in this gloom, the author cites sources of hope – within African cultures themselves.