New paper, ‘Africa as a Success Story: Political Organisation in Pre-Colonial Africa,’ by 2024 Nobel laureate and University of Chicago Professor, James A. Robinson, has offered a sweeping reinterpretation of African political institutions before European colonisation.

The paper, co-authored by Soeren J. Henn, establishes a striking new finding: that in 1880, on the eve of the European “scramble for Africa,” the continent was home to an estimated 45,000 independent political units, or polities. Fewer than two per cent of these could reasonably be classified as states, and less than 1 per cent were organised along ethnic lines. Even when larger states did exist, these larger states taken together encompassed, at most, 44 per cent of Africa’s population.

“Drawing on economics, history, and anthropology, we argue that African societies intentionally organised themselves to prevent political centralisation—and that, by their own objectives, they largely succeeded in this political goal,” said Robinson, who is also a Harris School of Public Policy faculty member.

This dramatic level of political decentralisation set Africa apart from Eurasia, where large, bureaucratic states became common. The authors argue that African societies deliberately chose to keep political authority local, fragmented, and closely tied to community institutions as opposed to the notion that pre-colonial African societies have long been seen through the lens of what they did not become.

By reframing Africa not as “failed” when looked at through a Western prism, but as a case of deliberate institutional choice, the paper contributes to a growing body of scholarship emphasising the multiple paths to political and social organisation. “Africa’s past is not defined by what it lacked, but by what it intentionally built and defended,” Robinson said.

The authors emphasised the local community—often organised through kinship structures, but also diverse forms such as village councils, age sets and titling societies—as the fundamental unit of African social life.

Centralised state authority was widely viewed as a threat to these local institutions. Even where states emerged, they were often what the literature calls “segmentary,” blending centralised authority with enduring kinship-based governance.

Seen on its own terms, the authors argue that Africa’s pre-colonial political organisation represents a form of success. Societies achieved what they set out to do—preserving local autonomy and preventing the concentration of political power.

Yet this success carried unintended and historically consequential costs. Extreme decentralisation made coordinated responses to external shocks difficult. It facilitated competition among polities during the Atlantic slave trade, increased vulnerability to European conquest through divide-and-rule strategies and complicated post-colonial state-building after independence, the study noted.

The authors also argue that markets, accumulation and large-scale competition were often secondary to the political goal of maintaining community autonomy. While the economic costs of this choice were relatively small in a pre-industrial world, they became far more consequential in the face of European mercantile capitalism and colonial rule, setting in motion political and economic realities that continue to shape Africa today.

“Africa’s past is not defined by what it lacked, but by what it intentionally built and defended,” Robinson said.