African countries have lost many of their informal social traditions and institutions, so property rights and justice have become arbitrary and insecure. Their most promising industry – agriculture – is usually stifled by price controls and bureaucratic marketing agencies imposed by urban elites, and stymied by trade barriers and subsidies in Europe and America, not to mention devastated by a proliferation of over-grazing goats. Ethnic strife between the biggest tribe, which maintains one-party rule, and its hated rival usually poisons politics. Paradoxically, African countries are often also
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