Africa’s Latent Assets
Explore three sets of unrecognized "latent assets" which bode well for future development in Africa.
About the Event
Join Professor and Pearson Institute Director James Robinson to explore how the nature of African society has led to three sets of unrecognized "latent assets" which bode well for future development. First, success in African society is talent driven and Africa has experienced high levels of perceived and actual social mobility. Second, Africans are highly skeptical of authority and attuned to the abuse of power. Third, the experience of navigating cultural and linguistic diversity sets Africans up for success in a globalized world.
Who's Speaking
James Robinson
Richard L. Pearson Professor of Global Conflict Studies and Institute Director, The Pearson Institute for the Study and Resolution of Global Conflicts
An economist and political scientist, Robinson has conducted influential research in the field of political and economic development and the relationships between political power and institutions and prosperity. His work explores the underlying causes of economic and political divergence both historically and today and uses both the mathematical and quantitative methods of economics along with the case study, qualitative and fieldwork methodologies used in other social sciences.
Robinson has a particular interest in Latin America, where he has taught every summer for over 25 years at the University of the Andes in Bogotá, Colombia, and in sub-Saharan Africa. He has conducted fieldwork and collected data in Bolivia, Colombia, Haiti, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Nigeria and Sierra Leone. He has published three books co-authored with Daron Acemoglu, an Institute Professor of Economics at MIT. The first, Economic Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy, proposed a theory of the emerge of and stability of democracy and dictatorship. Their second book Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty (translated into 41 languages since its publication in 2012), pulled together much of their joint research on comparative development and proposed a theory of why some countries have flourished economically while others have fallen into poverty. Their most recent book, The Narrow Corridor: States, Society and the Fate of Liberty, examines the incessant and inevitable struggle between states and society, and gives an account of the deep historical processes that have shaped the modern world.
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