Africa category: 4903 books

Vast, diverse, dynamic, and turbulent, the true nature of Africa is often obscured by its poverty-stricken image. In this controversial guide, Tom Young cuts through the emotional hype to critically analyse the continent’s political history and the factors behind its dismal economic performance. Maintaining...

In Kwame Nkrumah and the Dream of African Unity, Lansiné Kaba describes some of the epic phases of Kwame Nkrumah’s struggle for the independence of his country, Ghana, and the unity of his continent, Africa. These two tasks were gigantic, complex, and even frightening. Each separately was promethean...

Since its publication in 1967, Burden of Empire has been widely praised and criticized for its controversial approach to the problem of colonialism in Africa. The authors have challenged the new "orthodoxy" about Africa—the belief that little but evil and exploitation has resulted from the era of European colonialism.

The rise of Western powers to global dominance is understood without excluding the relationship of Western Europe and the Americas with Africa between the 1400s and late 1800s. The industrial revolution in the 18th and 19th centuries Europe rests significantly on the labour, intellect and overall...

The end of the Cold War introduced an altered global dynamic. The old bond of East/West patronage in Africa was broken, weakening the first crop of independent revolutionary leadership on the continent who no longer had the support of one or other of the superpowers. With collapse of the Soviet Union,...

This rich collection of biographies of African men and women adds a crucial human dimension to our understanding of African history since 1800. The last two centuries have been a time of enormous change on the continent, and these life stories show how people survived by resisting European conquest...

Authoritative and comprehensive, The History of Africa provides an accessible narrative from earliest prehistory to the present day, with unusual attention paid to the ordinary lives of Africans. This survey includes a wealth of indigenous ideas, African concepts, and traditional outlooks that have...

In the 1950s, Ghana, under the leadership of Kwame Nkrumah and the Convention People’s Party, drew the world’s attention as anticolonial activists, intellectuals, and politicians looked to it as a model for Africa’s postcolonial future. Nkrumah was a visionary, a statesman, and one of the key...

What were the experiences of those in Africa who suffered from the practice of slavery, those who found themselves captured and sold from person to person, those who died on the trails, those who were forced to live in fear? And what of those Africans who profited from the slave trade and slavery?...

Unique and detailed first-hand account of Ethiopia in 1896-97 -- at the change of an era -- by a Russian officer with remarkable understanding for the many varied people who lived there and keen insight into their destiny. According to a review in "Old Africa": "Despite its bland title, this is the most...

Now we will think about the other two tribes who live in this country, but who are of quite a different race from the others. These little red and black Pigmy peoples do not have villages at all. They are all hunters, and each man wanders with his wife and children wherever he chooses. Then, near...

This collection makes available rare sources on the aims, functions and effects of British administration in Africa. Topics examined include: land and urban administration, law and jurisprudence, taxation and administration of natural resources.

For the populations of the developing economies – the vast majority of humanity – the present century offers the prospect of emulating Western standards of living. This hope is combined with increasing awareness of the environmental consequences of the very process of global industrialisation...

The problem of environmental degradation on the African continent is a severe one. In this book, Cajetan Iheka analyses how African literary texts have engaged with pressing ecological problems in Africa, including the Niger Delta oil pollution in Nigeria, ecologies of war in Somalia, and animal abuses....