Abstract: African extreme poverty is probably a function (although not solely) of the balkanized post-colonial geopolitics of Africa. It is also probably a function (although not solely) of the income distribution generated by a typically perverse African political economy, through its effect on the allocation of resources to development. As between these two causes, the second is probably much the more important. This reinterpretation puts considerably more of the blame for African poverty on the Western great powers than does the “poverty trap” analytic that is a common contemporary way of thinking about the African economic situation.