Lee Wengraf's ‘Extracting Profit’ is a short yet scattered account of the role of old and new imperial and sub-imperial forces in perpetuating Africa's underdevelopment. The Review of African Political Economy has recently been home to debate on this topic, with David Harvey's (well articulated) position on the lack of contemporary usefulness of the concept being subject to a number of critical takes on the platform. While it is positive that Wengraf brings aspects of this debate to the African context from an activist perspective, the book does not add much new to this literature. This is so since it consists almost exclusively of literature review, including abundant quoting of hefty passages from a range of authors – Patrick Bond and Leo Zeilig in particular. At times the book comes across as journalistic and descriptive, rather than a structured body of work with a clear and coherent argument, defended with recourse to the relevant evidence.

For much of the book, the author fails to develop on what seems to be (it is hard to identify) one of the main theses of the book, outlined in the early chapters: the post-colonial development agenda failed because it followed a flawed ‘Stalinist’ path (54). The characterisation of national development strategies as Stalinist is hardly expanded upon, which makes the argument tough to engage with. If we take it to mean something of the (vague) sort of a development strategy that is inwardly oriented, this thesis runs into contradiction later on in the book where Wengraf, again superficially, critiques export-oriented strategies (70). Regardless, the Internationalist-Stalinist dichotomy of development strategies is likely not the most helpful nor enlightening lens for analysing the national development era.

The second main thesis of the book seems to approximate something along the lines of contemporary underdevelopment in Africa being the by-product of imperialism. While this is a thesis many Left discussants on Africa's political economy might be sympathetic to, the author fails to build a serious case for the argument. Firstly, while it is true that the author references, amongst other, empirical work detailing the extent of capital flight from Africa, I think it is fair to say that the author does not really champion a central mechanism that is driving the transfer of surplus from the periphery to core, as part of their own argument. In early parts of the book discussing Rodney's account of African underdevelopment, the author seems to briefly defend the view that pillaging of labour and natural resources are the primary means through which imperialism operates. In the interest of rigour, it would be worth contrasting this argument with, firstly, the Lewisian question of economic growth with unlimited supplies of labour and, secondly, the (reasonable) view expressed at times later in the book that development of African economies beyond mere resource extraction is necessary. In short, the pillaging explanation may be inconsistent with other prominent accounts of underdevelopment.

Too often the author comments in a simplistic fashion about the Marxist approach to imperialism – that it stresses ‘a unitary global system; the tendency of economic rivalries to spill over into military conflict’ (27). Is there anything exclusively Marxist about these ideas in their vaguest form? Platitudes about the unitary global system are used to directly feed into the Trotskyist programmatic vision outlined at the end of the book. Yet the author is unable to provide a compelling argument for contending the plausibility of an internationalist strategy for overcoming global capitalist exploitation amidst uneven development, not only across the world as a whole, but even across just the African continent. This is reflected in the lack of attention the author pays to why Nigeria and South Africa (two of the continent's richest, most industrialised economies) are relative hotbeds of worker militancy on the continent.

While Wengraf has identified an important subject that is overdue careful analysis, the debate around underdevelopment and imperialism in Africa would benefit from greater rigour than this book displays.