Robert Guest

Robert Guest is a Washington correspondent and the Lexington columnist for The Economist, covering American news and politics. Previously, he covered Africa for seven years while based in London and Johannesburg. Before joining The Economist, he was the Tokyo correspondent for The Daily Telegraph, and before that a freelance writer based in South Korea. Guest is also the author of the 2004 book The Shackled Continent: Africa’s Past, Present and Future. In receiving the 2004 Frédéric Bastiat Prize for Journalism for his 2003 survey of Africa for The Economist, he affirmed his faith in Africa’s ability to overcome devastating poverty. “To my mind, no part of the world shows more clearly than Africa the need for economic liberty and the rule of law. Their absence in so many African countries keeps the continent needlessly poor, and that’s something journalists have to keep shouting about.” He appears regularly on CNN and the BBC.