Editorial: To Our Readers

Abstract

Careful observers of West Africa Review would have noted that, in our actions and activities, if not in our formal pronouncements, we hold that what West Africa and West African studies critically need at this time is not more “solutions” to supposed “problems” but more questions, audacious, wide-ranging, corner-raking, questions without which any solution can only be an ersatz one. For too long, West Africa has been the recipient of all sorts of “solutions” from all categories of “experts” from all climes, experts who know next to nothing about the questions that led to the problems they are called to solve. Governments and bureaucracies poured millions of dollars into the industry. Many enterprising scholars of the region too rushed to cash in on the scam, with crassly policy-driven “scholarly” papers listing warehousefuls of “problems and prospects” without raising a single systematic question. But problems are not questions, and though problems are easier to identify than raise questions, we must resist the urge of cheap satisfaction that has led us nowhere.