Credit currencies and culture: African financial institutions in historical perspectives

A striking feature of African history is the volume of commerce and production that has been possible without the full panoply of credit, insurance, futures services that make up the formal sector of modern economies. The contributions to this volume investigate institutional nexuses through which money has been managed in Africa issue that are examined include the cultural or religious sanctions on financial transactions, the key social organizations through which moral authority was exercised, the routine intermittent recourse people had to borrowing, lending and building up assets, and the many ways in which monetary management figured in society and culture more broadly. By adopting a historical perspective, each paper addresses change over time and together the contributions and valuable insights into causes for discontinuity. The present volume can therefore be read both as a survey of institutional adaptation to changing circumstances and a commentary on African's economic crisis. A key assumption is that a better understanding of Africa's historical repertoire of financial institutions is essential to reserve contemporary economic decay and build sustainable institutions for the twenty-first century.