Limited knowledge of African inequality trajectories hampers our understanding of the drivers of heterogeneous inequality outcomes in Africa today, and leads to a major omission in debates about global inequality. In recent years, African economic history has advanced towards the reconstruction...

“Many people have tried to draw lessons from Botswana’s apparent economic success, and linked it to unique features of the country’s history. In this book, Bolt and Hillbom have used detailed historical research to tell the story of that success, and suggest that it is perhaps not so...