While current levels of economic inequality in Africa receive ample attention from academics and policymakers, we know little about the long-run evolution of inequality in the region. Even the new and influential ‘global inequality literature’ that is associated with scholars like Thomas Piketty, Branko Milanovic, and Walter Scheidel has had little to say about Africa so far. This paper is a first effort to fill that void. Building on recent research in African economic history and utilizing the new theoretical frameworks of the global inequality literature, we chart the long-run patterns and drivers of inequality in Africa from the slave trades to the present. Our analysis dismantles mainstream narratives about the colonial roots of persistent high inequality in post-colonial Africa and shows that existing inequality concepts and theories need further calibration to account, among others, for the role of African slavery in the long-run emergence and vanishing of inequality regimes.

中文翻译：

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从前殖民时代到现在的非洲不平等制度

虽然非洲目前的经济不平等程度受到学术界和政策制定者的充分关注，但我们对该地区不平等的长期演变知之甚少。即使是与托马斯·皮凯蒂、布兰科·米拉诺维奇和沃尔特·谢德尔等学者相关的新的、有影响力的“全球不平等文学”，迄今为止也很少谈及非洲。本文是填补这一空白的第一个尝试。基于最近对非洲经济史的研究，并利用全球不平等文献的新理论框架，我们描绘了从奴隶贸易到现在非洲不平等的长期模式和驱动因素。