In discussions of sub-Saharan Africa's situation, critiques suggesting that the continent's elites are simply the victims of structural pressures and hence bereft of responsibility for Africa's current predicament are common. Colonialism, neo-colonialism, debt, Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs), and now ‘globalisation’, are all said to provide explanations for the continent's plight, while its leaders have been tacitly exonerated (or have absolved themselves) from almost all blame. Tom Young's useful introduction to politics in Africa provides a thought-provoking and at times provocative rebuttal to much of this sentiment.

Young divides his book into five chapters: ‘Africa before colonialism’; ‘Colonial rule and nationalist revolt’; ‘Independent Africa: success and failure’; ‘Conflict, war and intervention’; and ‘Can outsiders change Africa?’ In all five chapters, the author takes to task both popular assumptions and the often cloying political correctness that accompanies much present-day analysis of the continent. Setting his stall out early, Young asserts: ‘the fact is that African studies, even in its more analytical and academic form, is often suffused by a certain kind of “political correctness”. It claims to treat Africans with respect and yet in fact treats them as special cases, as objects of primarily moral concern; this is, in a way, to treat them like children’ (p. x).

The author's treatment of the colonial period and the nationalist campaigns for independence is balanced by discussions of colonial outrages and also the effects of colonial rule on class-building, nationalist sentiment, and overall economic and political development. Young takes issue with simplistic accounts of this period and the diversity of the colonial experience is forcefully noted. This theme of a huge, diverse but equally dynamic and vigorous continent pervades the book.

The chapter on ‘Independent Africa’ is set up to discuss ‘What went wrong?’ (p. 57). Young notes that one of the fundamental problems in large parts of post-colonial Africa was that the ruling elites lacked full control over diverse and turbulent societies. Whilst the early years of nationalism may have been an attempt to build a cohesive project, this quickly collapsed into autocracy and failure. As a result, the elite's domination and their modalities of governance quickly became expressed through both the threat and actual use of violence and the immediate disbursal of material benefits to supporters in neopatrimonial regimes. Young does a good job in discussing some of the early success found in immediate post-colonial Africa and then some of the factors that explain the failings. In explaining why this occurred, the author pins his analysis on two sets of reasons: firstly, macro-economic mismanagement and secondly, faulty policy that tried to extract surplus from the agricultural sector to promote industrialisation which ‘made conditions worse for rural people, without producing a vibrant industrial sector’ (p. 76).

Although mentioning Claude Ake's famous assertion that development was never really on the agenda of many post-colonial leaders, so absorbed were they with maintaining power and the concomitant self-accumulation that went with it, Young somewhat dodges the question as to whether the failings were avoidable. This is important as for many post-independence leaders the idea that resources should be channelled towards something grandly called ‘national development’ was often never on the agenda, aside from routinised rhetoric. Equally, the indigenised bureaucracy quickly developed their own set of interests (personal survival) and logic as prebendary organisations that further distorted their role away from the ideal-type bureaucratic model that they were ostensibly supposed to follow in the new, ‘modern’ state that they inherited. Instead, a loose set of skeleton institutions lacking in most capacities other than to act as parasitical predators upon the population or gatekeepers to resources emerged. So the answer to Ake's question whether Africa's regimes genuinely pursued development remains vital, and the answer should critically inform interpretations of the history of many post-colonial states.

Despite this, Young's book is an excellent antidote to a lot of the claptrap that pervades the media about Africa. His final chapter, asking whether outsiders can save Africa, is timely given that aid policy at present blithely assumes that African governments are incapable of providing social services for their citizens until – and unless – foreign donors provide the resources that are required – i.e. are ‘saved’ by those nice Western folk. The assumption is that in Africa there is simply no money for social provision and so the finances must be sourced externally in the form of developmental assistance. This familiar refrain is what the aid industry's mantra is centred upon. Yet as is clear, in a great many African countries, this is simply incorrect. It is the misallocation of funds and the lack of prioritisation – as well as deep-rooted corruption and wastage – that means that the social budgets in various states on the continent are often empty. And Young makes the important point that such elites do not hang in the air, autonomously above society: their practices and the political cultures that inform their behaviour are grounded in wider societal practices and expectations. ‘Saving’ such a milieu is extremely difficult in these circumstances. The malady affecting the continent is not simply, or even primarily, economic, nor is it mostly external. It is political and mainly endogenous.

Young's book is a very useful introduction to the subject. He does not pull any punches, and the book is ideal as an introductory text for students approaching the subject, whose lecturers encourage their students to question and examine popular and/or previously held beliefs. The volume is highly recommended.