Recent BooksSeptember/October 2019 243The Oxford Handbook of the Ethiopian
Economy
EDITED BY FANTU CHERU,
CHRISTOPHER CRAMER, AND
ARKEBE OQUBAY. Oxford University
Press, 2019, 1,008 pp.Over the last two decades, Ethiopia has
emerged as one o the fastest-growing
economies in the world. This has
proved a boon for analysts, many o
whom have seized on Ethiopia’s success
as vindication o their particular phi-
losophy o economic development. The
editors o this massive volume on the
Ethiopian economy have commendably
sought to include as many viewpoints as
possible while emphasizing empirical
approaches. The book covers the major
issues, including macroeconomic policy,
the development o the social welfare
system, agriculture, and industrial
policy. Although the dierent theoreti-
cal explanations for Ethiopia’s successes
and failures rarely confront one another
in the book, the volume as a whole
reveals a pragmatic and Çexible govern-
ment trying to solve developmental
problems with the resources it has
available. Ethiopia has made mistakes,
but unlike many other African countries,
it has generally avoided repeating
them and has tended to eschew ideol-
ogy in favor o what works on the
ground. The state has taken an inter-
ventionist stance, but it usually pays
attention to market signals and the
welfare o its population.∂War II era was independently under-
going major doctrinal changes, aected
at least in part by the end o colonial-
ism. Her research uncovers conclusive
evidence, for example, o Diop’s inÇuence
on Pope John XXIII in the lead-up to
the Second Vatican Council.
Combatants: A Memoir of the Bush War
and the Press in Uganda
BY WILLIAM PIKE. Self-Published,
2019, 304 pp.
In 1984, Pike, then a London-based
journalist fresh out o college, used
expatriate Ugandan connections to
arrange access to the camps o the
National Resistance Army in the central
Ugandan bush, where the group was
¿ghting a guerrilla war against the
regime o Milton Obote, under the
leadership o a 40-year-old Yoweri
Museveni. Pike’s reports in the British
press, which documented atrocities
perpetrated by the Ugandan govern-
ment and cast the £¬ in a favorable
light, helped the group gain credibility
in the West. In 1986, when Museveni
came to power, he invited Pike to edit
the government newspaper, the New
Vision, promising him editorial indepen-
dence. For two decades, Pike ran the
paper, turning it into Uganda’s newspa-
per o record, before the regime’s
growing authoritarianism forced him
out. Pike tells the story well, mixing his
personal experiences with an analysis o
the last 30 years o Ugandan history.
He follows his detailed account o the
nasty civil war o the 1980s with a
perceptive look at the Museveni regime,
from its early informal idealism to the
ossi¿ed personal dictatorship o today.