Why Africa is one of the most unequal continents in the world

“Night and day my heart is bleeding,” sings the Zimbabwean artiste Winky D on his new album. “When I look at the poor and needy, everything gone with the greedy.” It seems the authorities do not share his concern. Last month the police stormed the stage mid-performance and shut down his gig.

Singers sometimes do a better job of chronicling African inequality than economists. With patchy data, measures of income distribution have long been little more than guesswork. But researchers are starting to peer through the statistical fog and uncover new evidence about inequality—past and present. They describe a continent that is staggeringly unequal in some parts and far less so in others.