Author: Giles Mohan, Marcus Power.

In recent years the work of economist Jeffrey Sachs (2006) has tirelessly promoted the idea that geography causes poverty, or as Haussman (2001) has put it: underdevelopment is a case of ‘bad latitude’. Here, income disparities within and between regions are explained by erratic climates, poor soil, inaccessibility, low agricultural productivity and infectious disease which then ‘mutually reinforce one another in a vicious cycle of destitution and backwardness’ (Watts, 2003: 11). If only African ‘tribes’ had lived in Europe, argues Jared Diamond (2005), it would be they and not Europeans who dominate world affairs today. Here ‘Africa’ in particular is cast as a ‘prisoner of geography’ (Hausmann, 2001) as nature, location and topography are seen to determine African growth and welfare. Moreover, according to Landes (2000: 30), while African poverty is partly a consequence of bad geography and insufficient infrastructure it also occurs due to ‘toxic’ cultures that ‘handicap those who cling to them’ since cultural values, such as hard work, honesty, open‐mindedness and a commitment to democracy are supposedly not as present in Africa as in Europe. Much of this work ‘takes us back rather than forward indeed it carries a pungent, late‐Victorian imperial odour’ (Watts, 2003: 11–2). Central to these discourses of development concerning ‘Africa’ is an Orientalism which repeatedly reduces the continent in all its diversity to a core set of deficiencies for which external ‘solutions’ must be devised (Andreasson, 2005). One of Sachs' (2006) invocations is that it is incumbent upon successful market economies to bring those areas of the world that still need help onto ‘the ladder of development’. Imperial hierarchies thus continue to shape the imagined geographies of international development which place Africa on the bottom rung of this ladder, reliant on ‘successful market economies’ for help. Hence, for this geographically challenged continent the prognosis is often a good dose of globalization (Watts, 2003) with Africa becoming a bigger part of global markets. Yet globalization is not some recent process to which Africa is only now being connected, courtesy of the international financial institutions (IFIs). Rather there are long standing structural trends concerning Africa's position in the international division of labour and its dependence on natural resources that explain the continent's limited growth and development – not its physical characteristics, poor roads or supposedly ‘toxic’ cultures (see also Fold, 2009; Rigg, 2009, in this forum).