Thandika Mkandawire - A Giant of African Economic Development

This piece was written to highlight the intellectual contributions of Late Professor Thandika Mkandawire. The author centers his piece on five bodies of work by Thandika Mkandawire. These are, his article, 'Thinking of Developmental States In Africa', the book he co-authored with Charles Soludo 'Our Continent, Our Future: African Perspectives on Structural Adjustment', his inaugural professorial lecture delivered at the London School of Economics in 2010, his essay critiquing Neopatrimonialism and review of Jeffrey Sachs’ book 'The End of Poverty'. The author provides brief summaries of these scholarly works while also shedding light on the vision Thandika Mkandawire had of Africa.

Comment from our editors:

This is an extremely insightful piece that highlights the work of a brilliant development economist whose work is rarely taught in most economic institutions. This piece, therefore, serves as an important point of entry into the work of Mkandawire. Apart from the insights that can be drawn from Mkandawire's interdisciplinary writing, his work also embody a decolonial perspective towards economics given his emphasis on the valuing of perspectives of scholars from the global south.

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