Measuring African Development: Past and Present - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1138056650 ISBN 13: 9781138056657

Publisher: Routledge, 2017

Synopsis

The chief economist for the World Bank's Africa region, Shanta Devarajan, delivered a devastating assessment of the capacity of African states to measure development in his 2013 article "Africa's Statistical Tragedy". Is there a "statistical tragedy" unfolding in Africa now? If so, it becomes important to examine the roots of the problem as far as the provision of statistics in poor economies is concerned. This book, on measuring African development in the past and in the present, draws on the historical experience of colonial French West Africa, Ghana, Sudan, Mauritania and Tanzania and the more contemporary experiences of Ethiopia and the Democratic Republic of Congo. The authors each reflect on the changing ways statistics represent African economies and how they are used to govern them.

This book was published as a special issue of the Canadian Journal of Development Studies.

About this title

About the Author

Morten Jerven is associate professor at Simon Fraser University. He is an economic historian, publishing widely on patterns of African economic development including a recent book, Poor Numbers: How We Are Misled by African Development Statistics and What to Do About It.

Edition details

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 2017
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1138056650
• ISBN 13: 9781138056657
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 216
• Editor: Jerven Morten