Abstract

In 1994, Paul Tiyambe Zeleza published A Modern Economic History of Africa. Vol. 1: The Nineteenth Century. Published by the Council for Development of Economic and Social Research in Africa (CODESRIA), the volume won the 1994 Noma Award for Publishing in Africa. ¹ The work itself was the most substantial economic history yet published of nineteenth-century Africa, and appeared to open an era in which scholars born on the African continent would take leadership in the study of its economic history. The detailed synthesis of the literature made the case for the great diversity of African economic life, generated by African-led processes of growth emerging out of domestic economies and also by the undermining of African growth through the progressive impact of enslavement for overseas markets. CODESRIA had formed twenty years earlier as a collaborative body organized to link social scientists across the African continent; it appeared at this moment to be stepping forward in the field of economic history in addition to its established strength in policy studies.