ABSTRACT
Few images convey Africa’s turnaround as powerfully as two covers of The Economist, separated by eleven years and depicted in
figure 2-1.
In 2000, the editors of the Economist saw in Africa a continent in a
spiral of violence and despair. As the Economist’s editors described it in
their lead editorial, “Mozambique and Madagascar have been deluged
by floods, famine has started to reappear in Ethiopia, Zimbabwe has
succumbed to government-sponsored thuggery, and poverty and pes-
tilence continue unabated. Most seriously, wars still rage from north
to south and east to west.” It was a damning safari of sorrow, one that
ended fatalistically. “Brutality, despotism and corruption exist every-
where,” the Economist reported, “but African societies, for reasons
buried in their cultures, seem especially susceptible to them.”1
