20/11/2023
Caius Fellow Dr Bronwen Everill explores how Africa became a site of repeated economic experimentation in her forthcoming book Good Intentions.
The Director of the Centre of African Studies, University of Cambridge University of Cambridge and 1973 Lecturer in History at Caius, Bronwen explores how visitors to Africa have tried to “fix” perceived problems they have encountered since the end of the slave trade until the present day.
She presented the work in the Gloria Carpenter Annual Lecture, titled Good Intentions: Slavery, Abolition, and Inequality in the Modern World, at Selwyn College last month, discussing how misunderstandings about Africa have played a regular role in the shaping of ideas about how economies should function, what the role of the economy in society is, how governments could intervene in the economy, and what makes people work.
Interventions, with good intentions, were followed by a cascade of further interventions as humanitarians, policy experts, and business leaders tried to address issues, as Bronwen explains.
“A lot of them had limited benefits. One of the problems with the idea that any of them was going to be a silver bullet is that when they do have a limited benefit, that isn’t necessarily accounted for in the next generation’s interventions,” she says.
“Every generation wipes the slate clean and tries to start from scratch. Every time it needed to be a new big winning idea, rather than slow gradual development.
“The main takeaway is that throughout it doesn’t bear any resemblance to what people on the ground are wanting. It’s about other people’s priorities, rather than being a ground up idea.”
Full story on the College website.
📰: https://www.cai.cam.ac.uk/news/good-intentions-exploring-economic-fixes-africa | Link in bio
