Population Density: A Missing Factor in Development — and Why This Is Africa’s Moment

Explanations of why Africa has lagged behind tend to reach for the familiar: weak governance, corruption, ethnic conflict, the legacy of colonial borders. Joe Studwell’s How Africa Works — the long-awaited companion to his influential How Asia Works — argues that these are largely symptoms rather than causes, and that the deeper constraint has been something rarely discussed: for most of its history, Africa simply had too few people in the right places. It is a bold, single-factor thesis, and…