George_Ayittey
George Ayittey
Ghanaian economist (1945–2022)
George B. N. Ayittey (13 October 1945 – 28 January 2022) was a Ghanaian economist and author. He was president of the Free Africa Foundation in Washington, D.C., a professor at American University,[1][better source needed] and an associate scholar at the Foreign Policy Research Institute.[2]
He championed the argument that "Africa is poor because she is not free," that the primary cause of African poverty is less a result of the oppression and mismanagement by colonial powers, but rather a result of modern oppressive native autocrats and socialist central planning policies.[3] He also went beyond criticism of the status quo to advocate for specific ways to address the abuses of the past and present; specifically he called for democratic government, debt reexamination, modernized infrastructure, free market economics, and free trade to promote development.