Restoring Africa’s Stolen Wealth

Relationships in trade and investment between Europe, the United States, and sub-Saharan Africa have long been asymmetrical, marked by systemic overcharges, underpayments, and exploitative practices. This book highlights a concept called kleptomation: a systematic, sustained theft of labor, resources, and wealth. Chapters examine the depth, breadth, and persistence of this economic injustice, exploring the inauthentic accumulation of wealth on the part of the West over the course of several hundred years. In the book, economist Richard F. America proposes a unified framework for reparations to address centuries of wrongful enrichment, illicit transactions, and hidden subsidies that have fueled Western prosperity. This framework is clearly defined and grounded in redistributive economic justice. Acknowledging previous attempts to repair the damage caused by kleptomation, this book presents a 40-year plan that international development executives, policymakers, and program managers can use to scale up capital transfers for development programs in Africa. Drawing on historical analysis and contemporary policy debates, the book exposes flaws in international trade accounting that obscure the true scale of wealth extraction. It calls for sustained capital transfers and structural reforms to recover unjust enrichment and accelerate Africa’s development over the next four decades. The resulting resource provides practical guidance for policymakers, development practitioners, and global institutions—including the World Bank, the European Union, the African Union, and civil society—seeking to end chronic poverty and achieve broadly shared prosperity within 40 years.