The Bright Continent
Dayo Olopade

About the Book

Dayo Olopade's The Bright Continent will report a phenomenon that is not new but has been overlooked: that people are Africa’s most abundant natural resource, and that a long tradition of individual resourcefulness, creativity, and straight hustling is the best hope for the continent’s social and economic development. The book takes inspiration from the massive failures of the traditional aid industry—and from the promise of the guys selling Christmas trees in Lagos traffic.

 

Despite evident exasperation at Western interventions that fail to adapt to local systems, the book is written more in wonder at African ingenuity than in anger at foreign incomprehension.

–The New Yorker.

 

Dayo Oloapde excavates a hopeful narrative about a continent on the rise, “a libertarian celebration of hustling, hacking and free-form development.” 

–The New York Times.

 And so Dayo Olopade’s “Bright Continent,” as its title suggests, is a corrective to Africa’s image as a dark, hopeless place.

–The New York Times.

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