Our Long Walk to Economic Freedom is an entertaining and engaging guide to global economic history told for the first time from an African perspective. In thirty-five short chapters Johan Fourie tells the story of 100,000 years of human history spanning humankind's migration out of Africa to the Covid-19 pandemic. His unique account reveals just how much we can learn by asking unexpected questions such as 'How could a movie embarrass Stalin?', 'Why do the Japanese play rugby?' and 'What do an Indonesian volcano, Frankenstein and Shaka Zulu have in common?'. The book sheds new light on urgent debates about the roots and reasons for prosperity, the march of opportunity versus the crushing boot of exploitation, and why it is the builders of society – rather than the burglars –who ultimately win out.

‘In three dozen short but wide-ranging chapters, Johan Fourie demonstrates that recent research in economic history can be both enlightening and fun. As entertaining as it is instructive, this slim volume provides a perfect introduction for students.'

Joel Mokyr - author of A Culture of Growth

‘Africa, the Forgotten Continent, comes into its own in Fourie’s engaging romp through human history. Good: our ancestors, after all, were all Africans, though most of us are less varied than people in our homeland on the veldt. The future of Africa is therefore bright. Fourie’s brilliant account shows why.

Deidre McCloskey - author of Beyond Positivism, Behaviorism, and Neo-Institutionalism in Economics

‘Johan Fourie is an extraordinary economic historian. This book allows us to understand our world today by taking the very long run perspective on humanity’s struggle against poverty, from the Neolithic to the Information Age. He shows how economic growth is possible and why poverty is not inevitable. This is the book for all those who are willing to learn from humanity’s long history to achieve a world in which more and more people can leave the deep poverty of the past behind.’

Max Roser - founder of Our World in Data

‘Fourie is leading a renaissance of African economic history, and Our Long Walk to Economic Freedom gives every interested person a way to access his scholarship and that of other key scholars. It is destined to become a must-read in higher ed syllabi.’

Marianne H. Wanamaker - co-Editor at Explorations in Economic History