David Luke, the editor of How Africa Trades, is professor in practice and strategic director at the Firoz Lalji Institute for Africa at the London School of Economics, where he oversees the Africa Trade Programme. As a former director of the African Trade Policy Centre at the UN Economic Commission for Africa (ECA), he led the technical work on the protocols that make up the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) agreement. Yet, despite the specialist knowledge he brings to bear on the subject area, alongside that of his five fellow contributors, the book has an admirably democratic mandate: “it aims to demystify African trade policy, which can be seen as a specialised – perhaps also esoteric – activity best left to ‘experts’, and to propagate a deeper and broader understanding of how trade impacts the lives of ordinary Africans and the continent’s development aspirations.” By providing up-to-date information on Africa’s trade that is easily reachable through open-access publication, the book seeks to empower policymakers and other stakeholders to interrogate the effectiveness of trade agreements and policy choices.
