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Because of the population growth in Africa, maintaining past trends means degrading human dignity for the majority, with a rural population surviving on intolerable toil, disastrous land scarcity, and worsening urban crisis, with more shanty towns, congested roads, unemployed, beggars, crime, and misery alongside the few unashamedly demonstrating greater conspicuous consumption, shopping at national department stores fill with luxury imports.
List of contents
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.
Summary
This 1988 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'.
