No fear to tread

Africa: Why Economists Get It Wrong. By Morten Jerven. Zed Books; 160 pages; $21.95 and £14.99.

ECONOMISTS who study Africa use dodgy theory and inappropriate statistical techniques, and at times deliberately mislead. In an interesting and highly readable book, Morten Jerven, himself an economist of Africa at Simon Fraser University in Canada, pulls no punches. He offers a devastating critique of the economics profession and asks provocative questions. But he overstates his case and offers few practical solutions.

For decades people have tried to explain why Africa has stubbornly remained poor. Explanations range from the legacy of colonialism and dependency on natural resources to “some inherent character flaw”. To show the relative importance of these factors, economists rely heavily on fancy statistical tests, crunching data from dozens of countries across many decades.

Mr Jerven dislikes this approach. It places too much trust in African data, much of which is horribly unreliable. In 2014 GDP growth in South Sudan was either 5% or 36%, depending on whether you believe the IMF or the World...

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