In The Captured State, Richard Dowden reviews Matthew Lockwood’s The State They’re In, about how African rulers run the state in their own interest:
In Africa, an estimated 40 per cent of privately owned wealth — about half the value of Africa’s debt stock — is held outside the continent. How can Africa ask for more foreign investment when its own wealthy do not invest in their own countries? African rulers strain every muscle to prevent anyone else developing a wealth or power base, even at the price of famine, war and national economic ruin. As they say in Kenya, it doesn’t matter how thin the cow gets if you are the only one on the teat.