Previous
Sir Arthur Lewis
Joseph Mobutu was the Congo’s authoritarian president from 1965 to 1997. After the Congo’s independence from Belgian rule, Mobutu continued Belgium’s extractive practices and amassed a private fortune of several billion dollars while the majority of his people lived in abject poverty. Acemoglu and Robinson view Mobutu’s regime as a classic example of how extractive institutions enrich the elite while neglecting and impoverishing the masses.
Get the entire Why Nations Fail LitChart as a printable PDF.
Joseph Mobutu Character Timeline in Why Nations Fail
The timeline below shows where the character Joseph Mobutu appears in Why Nations Fail. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 3: The Making of Prosperity and Poverty
...institutions? Not necessarily, they argue. For instance, after the Congo’s independence in 1960, President Joseph Mobutu created extractive economic institutions to enrich himself because he knew he would surely lose power...
(full context)
...absolutist system with more extractive economic institutions. And after the Congo became independent in 1960, Mobutu repeated this pattern. While Mobutu extracted as much wealth as he could from the country,...
(full context)
