This book looks at sub-Saharan Africa with one purpose - to analyse the reasons for its citizens' poverty. It sheds some light upon the balance between internal factors (governance; economy; war and conflict) and external factors (post-colonialism and the neoliberal global economy) that have affected sub-Saharan Africa. The book shows that the problem of poverty is not inevitable, nor due to anything inherent in sub-Saharan African citizens, nor is it the result of lack of resources but rather it is the outcome of particular circumstances designed to benefit the controllers of the current world order - whether within or outside sub-Saharan Africa - rather than sub-Saharan Africans themselves. The book, which benefits from chapters on individual states provided by students of Manchester Metropolitan University, will be of interest to anyone that is interested in the politics and economics of Africa, or that has an interest in world poverty and its causes in general.