On holiday in the (remarkably for mid-July) sunny South Island, I was reading Dictatorland: The Men Who Stole Africa, by British journalist Paul Kenyon. It is well-worth reading for anyone with an interest in Africa, or indeed in economic (under)development. Over 400 or so pages, it is a series of accounts of leaders of post-colonial African countries who enriched themselves – typically almost obscenely so – from the vast natural wealth of the continent. There are exceptions of course; notably well-governed Botswana. And there were countries where idealistic disastrous policies impaired the material wellbeing of the citizenry without any great personal enrichment of the leaders (Tanzania and Zambia under Nyerere and Kaunda are two examples). But Kenyon’s focus is on a series of countries with abundant natural resources (oil or very fertile land in his particular examples), one or more brutal leaders, and, at very best, mediocre material…
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Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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