Léonce Ndikumana & James K. Boyce, Africa's Odious Debts: How Foreign Loans and Capital Flight Bled a Continent

Abstract

Abstract. After a period when the discourse on capital flight was largely coined for a rhetoric aimed to feed into the Marxist argument that capitalism could not lead to the development of the Third World, the debate on capital flight has increasingly become part of mainstream economics since the 1990s. This move has been accompanied by unprecedented efforts to refine the concept of, and measurement approach to capital flight, and better understand the challenges and opportunities of capital flight curbing or reversal for developing countries. Africa’s Odious Debts is one of the outcomes of such efforts.