Earlylands in Conversation
Earlylands in Conversation
Podcast Description
A discussion series with leading thinkers focused on issues at the intersection of business, politics, and culture.
Podcast Insights
Content Themes
Focuses on the interplay between commerce, governance, and societal trends, with episodes such as 'minerals for security' discussing resource management in a politically charged atmosphere and 'the impact of globalization on local economies' addressing economic shifts in a changing world.
A discussion series with leading thinkers focused on issues at the intersection of business, politics, and culture. Whether it be trends in corporate deal-making, shifts in geopolitics, or notable new writing, our aim is to focus on the ideas and themes that drive headlines, inform boardroom conversations, and motivate policymakers.
It can be argued that each generation of Western development expert arrives in Africa convinced the previous generation got it wrong, and leaves having made a version of the same mistake. Trade, then agricultural productivity, then trade again, then structural adjustment, followed by microcredit.
Historian Bronwen Everill, in her book Africonomics: A History of Western Ignorance (The New Press, 2025; William Collins, 2024), traces that cycle from the abolition of the slave trade to the current competition over critical minerals, and finds one premise sitting underneath every iteration: that African economies would work if only they looked more like Western ones.
Africonomics was shortlisted for the 2025 British Academy Book Prize, took second place for the BCA African Business Book of the Year, and drew a starred review from Publishers Weekly. Browen is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and the former director of the Centre of African Studies at the University of Cambridge. She teaches in the Princeton Writing Program and is a research affiliate at the Laboratory for the Economics of Africa's Past at Stellenbosch University.
This is our last episode before a short summer break. Wewill be back with a new conversation in September. If you enjoy this episode, please follow Earlylands in Conversation wherever you listen.
Books Mentioned on the Podcast
–Africonomics: A History of Western Ignorance by Bronwen Everill
–Anansi's Gold: The Man Who Looted the West, Outfoxed Washington, and Swindled the World by YepokaYeebo
–The Moon Is Dead! Give Us Our Money! by Keletso E. Atkins
–The Migrant Cocoa-Farmers of Southern Ghana: A Study in Rural Capitalism by Polly Hill
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