A volume published some years ago, called How to Lie with Statistics, took an extremist view of the problem raised by its title. Unreliability of statistics is my starting point for a necessarily brief analysis of what appears a significant problem for sub-Saharan Africa: how can Africa develop in the interests of its own people, as distinct from the largely European beneficiaries of the African economy today; and how can “development” take place, as opposed to mere “growth”?

The distinctions between development and growth have been analyzed penetratingly in, for example, Basil Davidson’s Can Africa Survive? and in the articles in Africa in the Seventies and Eighties, edited by Frederick Arkhurst, especially in the editor’s comments.