May 9, 2003

A Critic of African Studies

To the Editor:

I can see that it is not difficult to be pessimistic about Africa today or in the near future, but I am more than a little puzzled by Gavin Kitching's sweeping assertion that Africanists today do not ascribe as much importance to postcolonial African elites in explaining Africa's travails as they do to external actors and conditions ("Out of Africa," March 28). ... His claim that Africanists focus on the glory years of the fall of colonialism quite frankly borders on

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