WANG FENG’S China’s Age of Abundance: Origins, Ascendance, and Aftermath, which I recently reviewed, offers fascinating food for thought about Africa’s problems. In his book, Wang, a University of California, Irvine sociologist, indirectly argues that China’s enormous success in generating prosperity between 1979 and 2019 was due to a high degree of political stability and coherence in its economic development program. That is largely because the two leaders who followed the worldly and experienced reformist Deng Xiaoping hewed closely to his road map.

For the full story, please visit https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/06/12/africa-economy-wealth-poverty-development-growth-history/.