Essays on The Political Economy of Africa

These essays, by two of the foremost scholars who worked in the Marxist tradition on African economic and social issues, offers an overview of socialism and economic development, and of nationalism and revolution in sub-Saharan Africa; of labor, peasantries, and populism. It includes case studies of Tanzania, Rhodesia, and Mozambique.

Giovanni Arrighi (1937-2009) taught in Europe, Africa, and the United States. He was a member of the Zimbabwe African Peoples Union in 1966, and was deported from Rhodesia for his political activities. In 1979, Arrighi joined Immanuel Wallerstein and Terence Hopkins as a professor of sociology at the Fernand Braudel Center at Binghamton University. He authored The Long Twentieth Century: Money Power, and the Origins of Our Times.

John S. Saul (born 1938) is a Canadian political economist and activist whose work has focused on the liberation struggles of southern Africa, from the 1960s to the present. In 2004, he was elected fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, in 2010 was granted an honorary doctorate by Victoria University within the University of Toronto, and, in 2011, a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Canadian Association of African Studies. He is the author of more than twenty books.