These volumes may give the impression of being a reference work, which is to a certain extent true for the second volume that contains chapters on the trajectories of economic development of particular countries. However, as reference works these books do not add much to what can already be found in the World Development Indicators. Nevertheless, they should be consulted by anybody interested in the study of economic life in Africa. The African Economic Research Consortium has brought together a large number of economists who show in these volumes a great capacity for inventive and elegant analysis.

The analysis starts from the viewpoint of opportunities and choices. The geographical perspective in the chapter ‘Opportunities and choices’ by Paul Collier and Stephen O'Connel represents the most stimulating analysis of opportunities. They distinguish three situations: coastal countries; resource-rich countries, often landlocked; and resource-poor landlocked countries. In the whole developing world, the growth performance of the last was least successful; in Africa, these countries were in gradual absolute decline; resource-rich countries did better, but their performance was disappointing in comparison with the performance of such countries in the developing world as a whole; the comparative performance of African coastal economies vis-à-vis others in the developing world was the worst.

The major perspective of choices is investigated through a classification of anti-growth syndromes resulting from the politics of particular countries. It is no wonder that collapsed and failed states performed worst, but apart from that the authors single out regulation and control as major anti-growth syndromes. Syndrome-free countries that avoided destructive internal conflict and allowed markets to operate freely functioned best. These examples only represent the most prominent of a plethora of themes to be found in these volumes. One can read about how various countries have dealt with commodity booms, or the influence of Fabianism on the first generation of African nationalist leaders. In the list of figures and tables, for example, a figure on ethnic rent and migration failure is followed by a table on ethnic fractionalisation and growth. Perusal may thus be rewarding for readers with a wide variety of concerns.

The importance of these volumes should not be belittled, but such a stocktaking of economic insight into African development shows also the limitations of what has been done. Of course, the quality or paucity of data limits the insights that can be gained from econometrics. Jan Willem Gunning's chapter ‘Shocks, risks and African growth’ illustrates this particularly well. He states that although ‘there is consensus that risk is an important reason for Africa's growth performance, there is still remarkably little evidence. Simply put, the literature provides no firm basis for statements on the quantitative importance of risk for growth’ (vol. I, p. 297). To me, this seems to be sufficient reason for a mention in passing, but not to fill sixteen pages with a discussion on the subject. In some cases, the use of regression analysis seems to give direction to questions rather than establish a definite causality. This appears most clearly in the case studies in volume II. For example, we find in the chapter on Tanzania: ‘By far the most dominant long-term growth potential relates to the combination of coastal location and labour surplus. The capital intensive nature of the booming mining sector limits its importance in translating growth into high welfare for the Tanzanian population. Translating growth into higher employment is important in the light of the large labour surplus in agriculture and can be achieved through the use of market friendly policies to attract lucrative labour-intensive private sector activities’ (vol. II, p. 430). However, the question should be why fifteen years of market-friendly policies have failed to achieve such private sector activity despite the pro-growth factors identified. A similar deadlock in analysis appears in the Kenyan chapter: ‘Kenya for example did not exploit globalisation to increase manufactured exports, given its coastal location, relatively cheap labour and basically market friendly orientation. The share of manufactured exports in manufacturing output remained quite low’ (vol. II, p. 236).

The country studies make clear that a different kind of case study was needed to answer the types of questions that the book seeks to address. For example, an early chapter concludes: ‘One African country in this category [landlocked, resource-poor] we judge to have avoided all the [anti-growth] syndromes, for the entire forty-year period is Malawi’ (vol. I, p. 101). However, Malawian economic life under Kamuzu Banda was highly regulated, despite being a thoroughly capitalist society in which private property was central to the development strategy. If some attention had been given to the vital tobacco industry, this would have become clear. The same goes for Côte d'Ivoire under Houphouet Boigny. Ethnicity receives some discussion in the volume, but not the structure of, for example, the cocoa industry. More consideration could have gone into thinking about regulation beyond a general anti-socialist sentiment based on these case studies. It is of course not surprising that Botswana as usual figures prominently as a syndrome-free country. No doubt, it deals with its natural resources much better than other countries, and that is a good reason to write positively about it. But it is a moot point whether ‘the interests of the members of government, mostly cattle raisers, coincided with the pursuit of market friendly policies that favoured the rural sector’ (vol. I, p. 153). The congruence of interest may be overstated, since there has been a marked growth of inequality in the livestock sector in rural Botswana, as wealthier cattle owners monopolised the access to boreholes drilled after independence. Furthermore, the livestock sector has already been in crisis for many years because foot and mouth disease is out of control, leading to the loss of access to export markets. These considerations suggest the crucial limitations of econometric-inspired studies and raise challenges for further research. One can learn much from analysing macroeconomic statistics, but the real understanding of economic life in Africa needs the study of what paradoxically is called the real economy: studies of the livestock sector in Botswana or the tobacco sector in Malawi. These volumes are valuable as inspiration for further research, but the new insights to be gained into African economies are limited.