"Development means a capacity for self-sustaining growth. It means an economy must register advances which in turn will promote further progress. The loss of industry and skill in Africa was extremely small, if we measure it from the viewpoint of modern scientific achievements or even by the standards of England in the late eighteenth century. However, it must be borne in mind that to be held back at once stage means that it is impossible to go on to a further stage. When a person was forced to leave school after only two years of primary school education, it is no reflection on him that he is academically and intellectually less developed than someone who had the opportunity to be schooled right through to university level. What Africa experienced in the early centuries of trade was precisely a loss of development opportunity, and this is of the greatest importance."

He's also funny as hell.

The connections he's making are great. How Europeans became middlemen and actually broke up economic integration between African regions. I don't have it in front of me, but his idea on African communities in isolation didn't have a large enough market, so local industry was stifled really hit me. It made it the idea of modern AES seem much more significant.