The 100 Greatest African History and Politics Books
Zebras, Serengeti savana plains, Tanzania by Gary (CC BY 2.0)
The 100 Greatest African History and Politics Books reading list focusses on Sub-Saharan history and politics. For more on North Africa see our best Middle Eastern and North African history books list.
1. History of Africa
This fourth edition of this best-selling core history textbook offers a richly illustrated, single volume, narrative introduction to African history, from a hugely respected authority in the field. The market-leading range of illustrated material from prior editions is now further improved, featuring not only additional and redrawn maps ... More »
2. Africa: A Biography of the Continent
By John Reader
"Awe-inspiring . . . a masterly synthesis." --"The New York Times Book Review "Deeply penetrating, intensely thought-provoking and thoroughly informed . . . one of the most important general surveys of Africa that has been produced in the last decade." --"The Washington Post In 1978, paleontologists in East ... More »
3. Africans: The History of a Continent
By John Iliffe
In a vast and all-embracing study of Africa, from the origins of mankind to the present day, John Iliffe refocuses its history on the peopling of an environmentally hostile continent. Africans have been pioneers struggling against disease and nature, but during the last century their inherited culture has ... More »
4. UNESCO General History of Africa, Vol. I
Volume I of this acclaimed series is now available in an abridged paperback edition. The result of years of work by scholars from all over the world, The UNESCO General History of Africa reflects how the different peoples of Africa view their civilizations and shows the historical relationships ... More »
5. Africa: Volume 1: African History and Culture Before 1900
By Toyin Falola; Steven J. Salm
Africa: Volume 1, African History and Culture Before 1900, provides new perspectives on African history and culture, surveying the wide array of societies and states that have existed on the African continent and introducing readers to the diversity of African experiences and cultural expressions. The authors reconstruct the ... More »
6. Africa and the Africans in the Nineteenth Century: A Turbulent History
By Catherine Coquery-Vidrovitch; Mary Baker
Most histories seek to understand modern Africa as a troubled outcome of nineteenth century European colonialism, but that is only a small part of the story. In this celebrated book, beautifully translated from the French edition, the history of Africa in the nineteenth century unfolds from the perspective ... More »
7. Africa since 1800
This book, the Fifth Revised Edition of a well-known introductory textbook, has remained in steady demand for the past forty years. The new edition covers events up to the middle of 2003, and takes account of the fresh perspectives brought about by the end of the Cold War ... More »
8. The Making of Contemporary Africa: The Development of African Society Since 1800
By Bill Freund
This comprehensive yet accessible text critically traces the complex trajectory of African society, culture, economy, and politics across more than two centures. Appearing nearly two decades after the previous edition was published, the third edition of The Making of Contemporary Africa has not only been revised throughout, but ... More »
9. Africa: A Modern History
By Guy Arnold | Used Price: 50% Off
This post-World War 2 history of Africa examines how independence - following the period of imperial domination by European powers – has shaped the continent. In 1945, four African countries had independence, by 1963 there were at least 30 states. This is their story. Arnold explains how ... More »
10. Africa since 1940: The Past of the Present
Africa since 1940 is the flagship textbook in Cambridge University Press' New Approaches to African History series. Now revised to include the history and scholarship of Africa since the turn of the millennium, this important book continues to help students understand the process out of which Africa's position ... More »
11. Africa since Independence
By Paul Nugent
A genuinely comparative study of the different trajectories and experiences of independent African states. This expanded, revised and updated new edition of an established text now includes the latest scholarship and features more on issues such as AIDS, urbanization, South Sudan, questions of citizenship and the importance of ... More »
12. Modern Africa: A Social and Political History
Basil Davidson's famous book -- now updated in a welcome Third Edition -- reviews the social and political history of Africa in the twentieth century. It takes the reader from the colonial era through the liberation movements to independence and beyond. It faces squarely the disappointments and breakdowns ... More »
13. The Postcolonial State in Africa: Fifty Years of Independence, 1960-2010
In The Postcolonial State in Africa, Crawford Young offers an informed and authoritative comparative overview of fifty years of African independence, drawing on his decades of research and first-hand experience on the African continent. Young identifies three cycles of hope and disappointment common to ... More »
14. African Politics: A Very Short Introduction
By Ian Taylor
Africa is a continent of 54 countries and over a billion people. However, despite the rich diversity of the African experience, it is striking that continuations and themes seem to be reflected across the continent, particularly south of the Sahara. Questions of underdevelopment, outside exploitation, and misrule are ... More »
15. An Introduction to African Politics
By Alex Thomson
The fourth edition of An Introduction to African Politics is an ideal textbook for those new to the study of this fascinating continent. It gets to the heart of the politics of this part of the world. How is modern Africa still influenced by its colonial past? How ... More »
16. Paths in the Rainforests: Toward a History of Political Tradition in Equatorial Africa
Vansina's scope is breathtaking: he reconstructs the history of the forest lands that cover all or part of southern Cameroon, Gabon, Equatorial Guinea, the Congo, Zaire, the Central African Republic, and Cabinda in Angola, discussing the original settlement of the forest by the western Bantu; the periods of ... More »
17. African Cities and Towns before the European Conquest
This richly illustrated book traces the precolonial development of African towns, cities, and architecture south of the Sahara. The book dispels the stereotypical view of Africans living in simple, primitive, look-alike agglomerations, scattered about without any appreciation for planning and design. More »
18. Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 1400-1800
This book explores Africa's involvement in the Atlantic world from the fifteenth through the eighteenth centuries. It focuses especially on the causes and consequences of the slave trade, in Africa, in Europe, and in the New World. Prior to 1680, Africa's economic and military strength enabled African elites ... More »
19. The Slave Trade
By Hugh Thomas
After many years of research, award-winning historian Hugh Thomas portrays, in a balanced account, the complete history of the slave trade. Beginning with the first Portuguese slaving expeditions, he describes and analyzes the rise of one of the largest and most elaborate maritime and commercial ventures in ... More »
20. Transformations in Slavery: A History of Slavery in Africa
This history of African slavery from the fifteenth to the early twentieth centuries examines how indigenous African slavery developed within an international context. Paul E. Lovejoy discusses the medieval Islamic slave trade and the Atlantic trade as well as the enslavement process and the marketing of slaves. He ... More »
21. Senegambia and the Atlantic Slave Trade
This authoritative study of 400 years of Senegambian history is unrivaled in its detailed grasp of published and unpublished materials. Taking as his subject the vast area covering the Senegal and Gambia river basins, Boubacar Barry explores the changing dynamics of regional trade, clashes between African and Muslim ... More »
22. Njinga of Angola: Africa's Warrior Queen
"The fascinating story of arguably the greatest queen in sub-Saharan African history, who surely deserves a place in the pantheon of revolutionary world leaders." -Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Though largely unknown in the West, the seventeenth-century African queen Njinga was one of the most multifaceted rulers in ... More »
23. Slavery and African Life: Occidental, Oriental, and African Slave Trades
This interpretation of the impact of slavery on African life emphasizes the importance of external demand for slaves by Occidental and Oriental purchasers in developing an active trade in slaves within Africa. The book summarizes a wide range of recent literature on slavery for all of tropical Africa. ... More »
24. Magomero: Portrait Of An African Village
By Landeg White
An insider's view of African historians' principal concerns--the slave trade, Christian missions, colonialism, land alienation and nationalism--is presented through this personalized account of a Malawi village from 1859 to the present. More »
25. The Scramble for Africa: White Man's Conquest of the Dark Continent from 1876 to 1912
"A phenomenal achievement, clear, authoritative and compelling......Thomas Pakenham's fine book tells the story of this particular gold rush with admirable and judicious poise....Contains some of the best-known episodes of 19th-Century history as well as some of the most mythologized and colorful characters the world has ever seen.....Livingstone and ... More »
26. Divide and Rule: The Partition of Africa, 1880-1914
The partition of Africa was one of the most spectacular episodes in modern history. For Europeans, Africa was still an unknown continent in 1880. Thirty years later almost all of it was under European control. This race for colonies went hand in hand with a host of thrilling ... More »
27. African Perspectives on Colonialism
By Albert Adu Boahen | Used Price: 80% Off
In this history one of Africa's leading historians examines African perspectives on colonialism, during the period 1880 - 1900, when all of Africa was colonised by the European powers. More »
28. King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa
In the 1880s, as the European powers were carving up Africa, King Leopold II of Belgium seized for himself the vast and mostly unexplored territory surrounding the Congo River. Carrying out a genocidal plundering of the Congo, he looted its rubber, brutalized its people, and ultimately slashed its ... More »
29. The Battle of Adwa: African Victory in the Age of Empire
In March 1896 a well-disciplined and massive Ethiopian army did the unthinkable-it routed an invading Italian force and brought Italy's war of conquest in Africa to an end. In an age of relentless European expansion, Ethiopia had successfully defended its independence and cast doubt upon an unshakable certainty ... More »
30. Murder and Politics in Colonial Ghana
In 1943, ritual murder was committed in a large African kingdom in the south of Ghana, then a colony of Great Britain. Palace officials and close kin of a recently deceased king had reputedly killed one of his chiefs in order to smooth the king's passage into the ... More »
31. History of Namibia: From the Beginning to 1990
In 1990 Namibia gained its independence after a decades-long struggle against South African rule--and, before that, against German colonialism. This book, the first new scholarly general history of Namibia in two decades, provides a fresh synthesis of these events, and of the much longer pre-colonial period. A History ... More »
32. A Short History of Mozambique
By Malyn Newitt
This comprehensive overview traces the evolution of modern Mozambique, from its early modern origins in the Indian Ocean trading system and the Portuguese maritime empire to the fifteen-year civil war that followed independence and its continued after-effects. Though peace was achieved in 1992 through international mediation, ... More »
33. The Darfur Sultanate: A History
By R.S. O'Fahey
This text presents an analytical narrative of Darfur, from the beginnings of its recorded history to the present. Three themes dominate: Darfur's complex history and its equally complex ethnic and ecological issues. The various phases of Darfur's history are given appropriate weight, under the sultans (c. 1650-1916), under ... More »
34. South Sudan: From Revolution to Independence
By Matthew Arnold; Matthew LeRiche
In July 2011 the Republic of South Sudan achieved independence, concluding what had been Africa's longest running civil war. The process leading to independence was driven by the Sudan Peoples' Liberation Movement, a primarily Southern rebel force and political movement intent on bringing about the reformed unity of ... More »
35. Food Aid in Sudan: A History of Power, Politics and Profit
In 2004, the UN's Humanitarian Coordinator for Sudan called Darfur the world's worst humanitarian crisis. That was soon followed by a comprehensive food aid program that was, at the time, the largest global response of its kind. Yet, more than a decade later, much of the population is ... More »
36. The Great Lakes of Africa: Two Thousand Years of History
Though the genocide of 1994 catapulted Rwanda onto the international stage, English-language historical accounts of the Great Lakes region of Eastern Africa-which encompasses Burundi, eastern Congo, Rwanda, western Tanzania, and Uganda-are scarce. Drawing on colonial archives, oral tradition, archeological discoveries, anthropologic and linguistic studies, and his thirty years ... More »
37. The Dynamics of Violence in Central Africa
Endowed with natural resources, majestic bodies of fresh water, and a relatively mild climate, the Great Lakes region of Central Africa has also been the site of some of the world's bloodiest atrocities. In Rwanda, Burundi, and the Congo-Kinshasa, decades of colonial subjugation-most infamously under Belgium's Leopold II-were ... More »
38. The Congo: From Leopold to Kabila: A People's History
The people of the Congo, as this book shows, have suffered cruelly throughout the past century from a particularly brutal experience of colonial rule; and, following independence in 1960, external interference by the United States and other powers, a whole generation of patrimonial spoliation at the hands of ... More »
39. The Democratic Republic of Congo: Between Hope and Despair
Over the past two decades, the Democratic Republic of Congo has been at the centre of the deadliest series of conflicts since the Second World War, and now hosts the largest United Nations peacekeeping mission in the world. In this compelling book, acclaimed journalist Michael Deibert paints a ... More »
40. Why Comrades go to War: Liberation Politics and the Outbreak of Africa's Deadliest Conflict
By Philip Roessler; Harry Verhoeven
In October 1996, a motley crew of ageing Marxists and unemployed youth coalesced to revolt against Mobutu Seso Seko, president of Zaire/Congo since 1965. The rebels of the AFDL marched over 1500km in seven months to crush the dictatorship, heralding liberation as a second independence for Central Africa ... More »
41. From War to Genocide: Criminal Politics in Rwanda, 1990-1994
In April 1994 Rwanda exploded in violence, with political, social, and economic divisions most visible along ethnic lines of the Hutu and Tutsi factions. The ensuing killings resulted in the deaths of as much as 20 percent of Rwanda's population. André Guichaoua, who was present as the genocide ... More »
42. When Victims Become Killers: Colonialism, Nativism, and the Genocide in Rwanda
An incisive look at the causes and consequences of the Rwandan genocide "When we captured Kigali, we thought we would face criminals in the state; instead, we faced a criminal population." So a political commissar in the Rwanda Patriotic Front reflected after the 1994 massacre of as ... More »
43. Killing Neighbors: Webs of Violence in Rwanda
In the horrific events of the mid-1990s in Rwanda, tens of thousands of Hutu killed their Tutsi friends, neighbors, even family members. That ghastly violence has overshadowed a fact almost as noteworthy: that hundreds of thousands of Hutu killed no one. In a transformative revisiting of the motives ... More »
44. A People Betrayed: The Role of the West in Rwanda's Genocide
Events in Rwanda in 1994 mark a landmark in the history of modern genocide. Up to one million people were killed in a planned public and political campaign. In the face of indisputable evidence, the UN Security Council failed miserably in its response. In this classic of ... More »
45. Nigeria: A New History of a Turbulent Century
Seen from some angles, Nigeria is a remarkable success story: despite its poorly conceived colonial origins, the lingering damage of its colonial subjugation, tenacious civil war, wildly unequal economy, and the recent insurgency by Boko Haram, it has nonetheless remained one nation, growing in population and power, for ... More »
46. Catastrophe: What Went Wrong in Zimbabwe?
No one in 1980 could have guessed that Zimbabwe would become a failed state on such a monumental and tragic scale. In this incisive and revealing book, Richard Bourne shows how a country which had every prospect of success when it achieved a delayed independence in 1980 became ... More »
47. Let the People Speak. Tanzania Down the Road to Neo-Liberalism
The ninety essays contained in this book are selected by the author from his writings published in newspaper columns during the period 1990-2005, a critical time in Tanzania that witnessed the rise and fall of nationalism, and transition to and consolidation of neo-liberalism. The essays give an overview ... More »
48. Another Fine Mess: America, Uganda, and the War on Terror
Is the West to blame for the agony of Uganda and its neighbors? In this powerful account of Ugandan dictator Yoweri Museveni's 30 year reign, Helen Epstein chronicles how Western leaders' single-minded focus on the War on Terror and their naïve dealings with strongmen are at the ... More »
49. Uganda: The Dynamics of Neoliberal Transformation
By Jorg Wiegratz; Elisa Greco; Giuliano Martiniello
For the last three decades, Uganda has been one of the fastest growing economies in Africa. Globally praised as an "African success story" and heavily backed by international financial institutions, development agencies, and bilateral donors, the country has become an exemplar of economic and political reform for those ... More »
50. An Economic History of South Africa: Conquest, Discrimination and Development
Charles Feinstein surveys five hundred years of South African economic history from the years preceding European settlements in 1652 through to the post-Apartheid era. Following the early phase of slow growth, he charts the transformation of the economy as a result of the discovery of diamonds and gold ... More »
51. White Supremacy Confronted: U.S. Imperialism and Anti-Communism vs. the Liberation of Southern Africa from Rhodes to Mandela
By Gerald Horne
Based upon exhaustive research in all presidential libraries from Hoover to Clinton, the voluminous archives of the African National Congress [ANC] at Fort Hare University in South Africa, along with allied archives of the NAACP, the Ford and Rockefeller fortunes, etc., this is the most comprehensive account to ... More »
52. Burkina Faso: A History of Power, Protest and Revolution
In October 2014, huge protests across Burkina Faso succeeded in overthrowing the long-entrenched regime of their authoritarian ruler, Blaise Compaoré. Defying all expectations, this popular movement went on to defeat an attempted coup by the old regime, making it possible for a transitional government to organize free and ... More »
53. A Certain Amount of Madness: The Life Politics and Legacies of Thomas Sankara
By Amber Murrey
Thomas Sankara was one of Africa's most important anti-imperialist leaders of the late 20th Century. His declaration that fundamental socio-political change would require a 'certain amount of madness' drove the Burkinabe Revolution and resurfaced in the country's popular uprising in 2014. This book looks at Sankara's political philosophies ... More »
54. Corruption and State Politics in Sierra Leone
By William Reno
William Reno provides a powerful, scholarly yet shocking account of the inner workings of an African state. He focuses upon the ties between foreign firms and African rulers in Sierra Leone, where politicians and warlords use private networks that exploit relationships with international businesses to buttress their wealth ... More »
55. Oil and Politics in the Gulf of Guinea
The Gulf of Guinea, on Africa's Atlantic coast, supplies fifteen per cent of America's oil and has recently experienced an immense inflow of investment. But why are American, European, and Asian oil companies enthusiastically committing tens of billions of dollars of long-term investment to the Gulf of Guinea's ... More »
56. Liberia: The Violence of Democracy
Liberia, a small West African country that has been wracked by violence and civil war since 1989, seems a paradoxical place in which to examine questions of democracy and popular participation. Yet Liberia is also the oldest republic in Africa, having become independent in 1847 after colonization by ... More »
57. African Realism?
African Realism? explains Africa's international conflicts of the post-colonial era through international relations theory. It looks at the relationship between Africa's domestic and international conflicts, as well as the impact of factors such as domestic legitimacy, trade, and regional economic institutions on African wars. More »
58. The International Relations of Sub-Saharan Africa
By Ian Taylor
Ian Taylor examines Sub-Saharan Africa's relations with states such as the US, India, China, the EU, and Britain as well as with non-state actors. More »
59. Africa and the International System
African independence launched into international politics a group of the world's poorest, weakest and most artificial states. How have such states managed to survive? To what extent is their survival now threatened? Christopher Clapham shows how an initially supportive international environment has become increasingly threatening to African rulers ... More »
60. France and the New Imperialism: Security Policy in Sub-Saharan Africa
The role of French security policy and cooperation in Africa has long been recognized as a critically important factor in African politics and international relations. The newest form of security cooperation, a trend which merges security and development and which is actively promoted by other major Western powers, ... More »
61. France's Relationship with Sub-Saharan Africa
France granted independence to its former colonies in West and Central Africa in the early 1960s. Nevertheless, thanks to a network of formal and informal agreements with these countries, France continues to wield considerable power and influence over them politically, economically, socially, and culturally. Through the various successive ... More »
62. Foreign Intervention in Africa after the Cold War: Sovereignty, Responsibility, and the War on Terror
In Foreign Intervention in Africa after the Cold War-interdisciplinary in approach and intended for nonspecialists-Elizabeth Schmidt provides a new framework for thinking about foreign political and military intervention in Africa, its purposes, and its consequences. She focuses on the quarter century following the Cold War (1991-2017), when neighboring ... More »
63. America's Covert War In East Africa: Surveillance, Rendition, Assassination
Clara Usiskin has spent eight years investigating the 'War on Terror' and its effects in the East and Horn of Africa, documenting hundreds of cases of rendition, secret detention and targeted killings. Her book sets out the historical background to today's covert war, including the early Somali jihads ... More »
64. The Real Politics of the Horn of Africa: Money, War and the Business of Power
By Alex de Waal
The Real Politics of the Horn of Africa delves into the business of politics in the turbulent, war-torn countries of north-east Africa. It is a contemporary history of how politicians, generals and insurgents bargain over money and power, and use of war to achieve their goals. Drawing ... More »
65. Piracy in Somalia: Violence and Development in the Horn of Africa
Piracy in Somalia sheds light on an often misunderstood world, oversimplified and demonized in the media and largely decontextualized in scholarly and policy works. It examines the root causes of piracy in Somalia, its impact on coastal communities, local views about it, and the measures taken against it. ... More »
66. The New Scramble for Africa
Once marginalized in the world economy, Africa today is a major global supplier of crucial raw materials like oil, uranium and coltan. China's part in this story has loomed particularly large in recent years, and the American military footprint on the continent has also expanded. But a new ... More »
67. The Looting Machine: Warlords, Oligarchs, Corporations, Smugglers, and the Theft of Africa's Wealth
By Tom Burgis
The trade in oil, gas, gems, metals and rare earth minerals wreaks havoc in Africa. During the years when Brazil, India, China and the other "emerging markets" have transformed their economies, Africa's resource states remained tethered to the bottom of the industrial supply chain. While Africa accounts for ... More »
68. Africa's Odious Debts: How Foreign Loans and Capital Flight Bled a Continent
By Leonce Ndikumana; James K. Boyce
In Africa's Odious Debts, Boyce and Ndikumana reveal the shocking fact that, contrary to the popular perception of Africa being a drain on the financial resources of the West, the continent is actually a net creditor to the rest of the world. The extent of capital flight from ... More »
69. Genocide by Denial: How Profiteering from HIV/AIDS Killed Millions
Genocide by Denial: How Profiteering from HIV/AIDS Killed Millions traces the carnage of HIV/AIDS from its Ugandan epicentre in the villages of Kasensero, along the shores of Lake Victoria, through sub-Saharan Africa and onto the rest of the world. The author's involvement in the struggle against the virus ... More »
70. Global Shadows: Africa in the Neoliberal World Order
Both on the continent and off, "Africa" is spoken of in terms of crisis: as a place of failure and seemingly insurmountable problems, as a moral challenge to the international community. What, though, is really at stake in discussions about Africa, its problems, and its place in the ... More »
71. The Dragon's Gift: The Real Story of China in Africa
By Deborah Brautigam | Used Price: 90% Off
Is China a rogue donor, as some media pundits suggest? Or is China helping the developing world pave a pathway out of poverty, as the Chinese claim? In the last few years, China's aid program has leapt out of the shadows. Media reports about huge aid packages, support ... More »
72. The Specter of Global China: Politics, Labor, and Foreign Investment in Africa
China has recently emerged as one of Africa's top business partners, aggressively pursuing its raw materials and establishing a mighty presence in the continent's booming construction market. Among major foreign investors in Africa, China has stirred the most fear, hope, and controversy. For many, the specter of a ... More »
73. Africa and China
With case studies from the technology, natural resource, security, manufacturing, and financial sectors, the volume shows not only how African realities shape Chinese actions, but also how African governments and entrepreneurs are learning to leverage their competitive advantages and to negotiate the growing Chinese presence across the continent. More »
74. African Economies and the Politics of Permanent Crisis, 1979-1999
This book explains why African countries have remained mired in a disastrous economic crisis since the late 1970s. It shows that dynamics internal to African state structures largely explain this failure to overcome economic difficulties rather than external pressures on these same structures as is often argued. Far ... More »
75. Neopatrimonialism in Africa and beyond
By Daniel Bach
Neopatrimonialism, a system whereby rulers use state resources for personal benefit and to secure the loyalty of clients in the general population, is central to any teaching or conceptualisation of contemporary African politics. This book is a theoretical and comparative study of neopatrimonialism in Africa and across world ... More »
76. Business, Politics, and the State in Africa: Challenging the Orthodoxies on Growth and Transformation
By Tim Kelsall
In recent years Africa appears to have turned a corner economically. It is posting increased growth rates and is no longer the world's slowest growing region. Commentators are beginning to ask whether emerging from Africa is a new generation of 'lion' economies to challenge the East Asian 'tigers'? ... More »
77. Economic and Political Reform in Africa: Anthropological Perspectives
What are the local effects of major economic and political reforms in Africa? How have globalized pro-market and pro-democracy reforms impacted local economics and communities? Examining case studies from The Gambia, Ghana, Mozambique, Kenya, Ethiopia, and Somalia, Peter D. Little shows how rural farmers and others respond to ... More »
78. The Rise of Africa's Middle Class
Across Africa the narrative of "Africa rising" has taken root in a burgeoning middle class. Ambitious and increasingly affluent, this group symbolizes the values and hopes of the new Africa, and they are regarded as important agents of both economic development and democratic change. This narrative, however, obscures ... More »
79. Africa: Why Economists Get It Wrong
For the first time in generations, Africa is spoken of these days with enthusiastic hope: no longer seen as a hopeless morass of poverty, the continent instead is described as "Africa Rising," a land of enormous economic potential that is just beginning to be tapped. More »
80. Democracy and Development in Africa
By Claude Ake
Despite three decades of preoccupation with development in Africa, the economies of most African nations are still stagnating or regressing. For most Africans, incomes are lower than they were two decades ago, health prospects are poorer, malnourishment is widespread, and infrastructures and social institutions are breaking down. ... More »
81. African Economic Development: Evidence, Theory, and Policy
By Christopher Cramer; John Sender; Arkebe Oqubay
Unevenness and inequalities form a central fact of African economic experiences. This book challenges conventional wisdoms about economic performance and possible policies for economic development in African countries, using the striking variation in economic performance as a starting point. African Economic Development: Evidence, Theory, and Policy highlights ... More »
82. Africa in Transformation: Economic Development in the Age of Doubt
By Carlos Lopes
"Drawing on his distinguished academic career, policy experience at the highest level, and deep love of the continent, Lopes provides a visionary analysis of Africa's current problems and future prospects. This book provides a highly unusual combination of intellectualism and hard-nosed pragmatism. A singular achievement." -Ha-Joon Chang, University ... More »
83. The Politics of Trade and Industrial Policy in Africa: Forced Consensus
By Charles Chukwuma Soludo; Osita Ogbu; Ha-Joon Chang
This book maps the policy process and political economy of policymaking in Africa. Its focus on trade and industrial policy makes it unique in the literature. Detailed case studies help the decisions can vary from country to country depending on the form of government, ethnicity and nationality, and ... More »
84. Industrial Policy and Economic Transformation in Africa
By Akbar Noman; Joseph Stiglitz
The revival of economic growth in Sub-Saharan Africa is all the more welcome for having followed one of the worst economic disasters-a quarter century of economic malaise for most of the region-since the industrial revolution. Six of the world's fastest-growing economies in the first decade of this century ... More »
85. Development Policy in Africa: Mastering the Future?
The author investigates the agenda for transformation in contemporary African development studies: policy studies, strategic studies, international relations and economic diplomacy. With a focus on the capacity dimension, he proposes critical policy and action-oriented recommendations on how to overcome present and future emergencies in Africa. More »
86. Green Land, Brown Land, Black Land: An Environmental History of Africa, 1800-1990
James C. McCann provides a synthesis of evidence and a narrative of Africa's evironmental history over the past two centuries. In a book readily accessible to undergraduates and nonspecialists, Professor McCann argues that far from being pristine and primordial spaces, Africa's landscapes were created by human activity. This ... More »
87. The New Harvest: Agricultural Innovation in Africa
This book argues that Africa can feed itself in a generation and help contribute to global food security despite its history of persistent food shortages and the rising threat of climate change. To achieve this, the continent must harness scientific and technological advances, invest in infrastructure, foster higher ... More »
88. Guarding the Guardians: Civil-Military Relations and Democratic Governance in Africa
The relationship between civil society and the armed forces is an essential part of any polity, democratic or otherwise, because a military force is after all a universal feature of social systems. Despite significant progress moving towards democracy among some African countries in the past decade, all too ... More »
89. Soldiers in Revolt: Army Mutinies in Africa
By Maggie Dwyer
Soldiers in Revolt examines the understudied phenomenon of military mutinies in Africa. Through interviews with former mutineers in Sierra Leone, Burkina Faso, and The Gambia, the book provides a unique and intimate perspective on those who take the risky decision to revolt. This view from the lower ranks ... More »
90. Coups from Below: Armed Subalterns and State Power in West Africa
By Jimmy Kandeh
Coups from Below represents the first major effort at studying coups carried out by the lumpen section or the subalterns of the armed forces of African states. No previous study has attempted to examine coup making by those in the bottom ranks of the military as a distinct ... More »
91. The Roots of African Conflicts: The Causes and Costs
By Alfred Nhema; Paul Tiyambe Zeleza
"Africa is no more prone to violent conflicts than other regions. Indeed, Africa's share of the more than 180 million people who died from conflicts and atrocities in the twentieth century is relatively modest.… This is not to underestimate the immense impact of violent conflicts on Africa; it ... More »
92. African Media and Democratization: Public Opinion, Ownership and Rule of Law
At a time when many African regimes are transitioning from authoritarian states to democratization, this book offers a timely assessment of the role of media in this process in Eastern and Southern Africa (ESA). With the exception of South Africa, this issue has been understudied in the region. ... More »
93. Social Media and Politics in Africa: Democracy, Censorship and Security
By Maggie Dwyer; Thomas Molony
The smartphone and social media have transformed Africa, allowing people across the continent to share ideas, organize, and participate in politics like never before. While both activists and governments alike have turned to social media as a new form of political mobilization, some African states have increasingly sought ... More »
94. The Power of African Cultures
By Toyin Falola
This book focuses on the modern cultures of Africa, from the consequences of the imposition of Western rule to the current struggles to define national identities in the context of neo-liberal economic policies and globalization. The book argues that it is against the backdrop of foreign influences that ... More »
95. Ethnic Conflicts In Africa
The resurgence and frequency of violent conflicts and tensions require analyses taking account of the factors that have shaped the history of ethnic identities and warring groups. Citing cultural differences as the ubiquitous precursor hinders such understanding. This fifteen-nation study of conflicts in Africa shows that the capacity ... More »
96. Politics of Origin in Africa: Autochthony, Citizenship and Conflict
In this revealing new book, Boas and Dunn explore the phenomenon of "autochthony" - literally meaning "son of the soil" - in African politics. In contemporary Africa, questions concerning origin are currently among the most crucial and contested issues in political life, directly relating to the politics of ... More »
97. Identity, Citizenship, and Political Conflict in Africa
Reflecting on the processes of nation-building and citizenship formation in Africa, Edmond J. Keller believes that although some deep parochial identities have eroded, they have not disappeared and may be more assertive than previously thought, especially in instances of political conflict. Keller reconsiders how national identity has been ... More »
98. Ethnicity and Democracy in Africa
By Bruce Berman; Dickson Eyoh; Will Kymlicka
The politics of identity and ethnicity will remain a fundamental characteristic of African modernity. For this reason, historians and anthropologists have joined political scientists in a discussion about the ways in which democracy can develop in multicultural societies. In Ethnicity and Democracy in Africa, the contributors address why ... More »
99. African Women: Early History to the 21st Century
African women's history is a topic as vast as the continent itself, embracing an array of societies in over fifty countries with different geographies, social customs, religions, and historical situations. In African Women: Early History to the 21st Century, Kathleen Sheldon masterfully delivers a comprehensive study of this ... More »
100. African Women: A Modern History
By Catherine Coquery-Vidrovitch
Over the last century, the social and economic roles played by African women have evolved dramatically. Long confined to home and field, overlooked by their menfolk and missionaries alike, African women worked, thought, dreamed, and struggled. They migrated to the cities, invented new jobs, and activated the so-called ... More »
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