Kako Nubukpo is an economist, professor at the member universities of the Conseil Africain et Malgache pour l’Enseignement Supérieur (CAMES) [African and Malagasy Council for Higher Education], a member of the Global Economic Governance Program for Oxford (Great Britain) and Princeton (United States). Former director of the Francophonie Economique et Numérique within the Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie (OIF), he was Ministre Chargé de la Prospective et de l’Evaluation des Politiques Publiques au Togo (2013-2015) [Minister Responsible for the Prospectives and the Evaluation of Public Policy in Togo].

Behind the expertly honed discourse of an emergence that is taking a long time to materialize beyond the “round tables” of the financial backers and the “expertise” of consulting firms, the facts remain unchanged. Sub-Saharan Africa is the only region in the world where the extremely poor population (below the income threshold of $1.25/day) has doubled in fifty years. If there has been growth in Africa, it is far from benefitting all Africans. And there is no sign that seems to indicate that the situation will improve in the short term.

This book defends the thesis of the instrumentalization of Africa as a laboratory of neoliberalism with the active or passive complicity of its own elites. It sounds the alarm on the reality of a rudderless Africa, prey to predatory mining and land-grabs, a massive licit and illicit outward flow of capital, European agricultural surpluses. It calls for the creation of a pluralistic and endogenous space for reflection on African economies and the outlook for their prosperity.

This is urgent, because the current blockages have turned the African continent into a true ticking time bomb. In the face of that fact, Kako Nubukpe shows how Africa is attempting to manage itself, proving despite everything to be a land of hope and innovations.