Introduction: New Pan African Economics

Abstract

The chapter serves as an introduction and overview of the book’s topic, arguments, thesis, and methodological framework about cultural identity, development, and political economic change in the contemporary global political economy as it affects the African continent. The thesis, embodied in the book title, Pan Africa Rising, underscores the significance of Afri-capitalism and Ubuntu business models as exemplars of culturally driven responses to the global political economy that infuse African identities and self-determined aspirations into global development discourses. Using cultural political economy as a methodological framework, this will be a book about Africa in the global political economy that engages crucially important research questions about the role that culture plays in improving our understanding of social and political changes that are transforming Africa today.