This article seeks to explore the politics of an increasingly prominent African diaspora. It does so by locating the growing debate on diasporas and development in a broader political economy context to provide a historical understanding of how the African diaspora, and its contribution to development outcomes, is shaped by Africa’s distinctive politics. In particular, the article considers the significance of neo-patrimonial systems of governance and the crisis of stateness in order to evaluate whether diaspora networks and income represent a significant opportunity to address long-standing problems on the continent.
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