At the start of the second decade of the twenty-first century, when the world is engulfed in a major financial crisis, Africa has the dubious distinction of being the worlds poorest continent. This book introduces and demystifies Africa’s diversity and dynamism, and considers how its peoples and environments have interacted through time and space. The background and diversity of Africa’s social, cultural, economic, political and environmental systems is examined, as well as key development issues which have affected Africa in the past and are likely to be significant in shaping the future of the continent. These include: the impact of HIV/AIDS; sources of conflict and post-conflict reconstruction; the state and governance; the nature of African economies in a global context and future development trajectories. 432pp, UK. ROUTLEDGE.

This stunning collection of African textile prints has been carefully selected from a range of traditional and contemporary patterns. From exuberant and colourful patterns to elegant, flowing designs, this book celebrates the vibrancy and variation of African textile prints. The introduction helpfully explains the significance of the patterns, the textiles market and the current popularity of African textiles in fashion and interiors. This fantastic range of full-colour images is also available in a digital format on the accompanying CD. 128pp, UK. A & C BLACK.

Argues that the 21st century will be the century of Africa. This continent was once seen as empty, rural, animist, poor, and forgotten by the world. Now, fifty years after independence, it is full to bursting, urban and monotheist. If poverty and violence are still rampant, economic growth has taken off again and a middle class is developing. Africa will hold a central place in the big issues facing the world today. If it once made a false start, here it is back again in the fast lane. The West has missed the turnaround of a continent that will no longer wait for us. How can we best understand it? Demography, economics, politics, diplomacy, cultures and religions this book presents the different facets of this new Africa, which will soon have a billion people, at the mid point of the most rapid population boom that humanity has ever known. Without ignoring the risks of its metamorphosis, it brings to light the forces and hopes that Africa harbours. Translated from the Franch by David Fernbach. 352pp, UK. POLITY PRESS.

With the Japanese posing as the leader of the world's peoples of colour peoples before World War II, many Ethiopians turned to Japan for inspiration. By offering them commercial opportunities, by seeking their military support, and by reaching out to popular Japanese opinion, Ethiopians tried to soften the stark reality of a stronger Italy encroaching on their country. 'Yellow' Japanese and 'black' Ethiopian collaboration before the war illuminates the pernicious and flexible use of race in international diplomacy. In odious terms, Italians used race to justify their actions as defending western and 'white' civilization. The Japanese used race to explain their tilt toward Ethiopia. The Soviets used race to justify their support for Italy until late 1935. Ethiopia used race to attract help, and 'coloured' peoples worldwide rallied to Ethiopia's call. 224pp, UK. JAMES CURREY PUBLISHERS.

An illustrated A to Z guide to the absurdities of life in the democratic South Africa. Kannemeyer subverts the myth of the 'rainbow nation' with acute humour and critique, dissecting the issues, events and personalities that confound the country in more than 70 paintings, drawings and prints. 71pp, SOUTH AFRICA. JACANA.

Apartheid Vertigo, the dizzying sensation following prolonged oppression and delusions of skin colour, is the focus of this book. Argues that for centuries, the colour-code shaped the state and national ideals of South Africa, created social and emotional distances between social groups, permeated public and intimate spheres of life alike, and dehumanized Africans of all nationalities in South Africa. Two decades after the demise of apartheid, despite four successive black governments, apartheid vertigo still distorts postcolonial reality. The colour-code, notably the aversion toward Africa and blackness, still prevails, but now in postcolonial masks. Despite political freedom, to a greater or lesser extent, black citizenry has adopted the code, and adapted it to fit the new reality. This vertiginous reality is manifest in the neo-apartheid ideology of Makwerekwere - the postcolonial colour-code mobilized to distinguish black outsiders from black insiders. Apartheid vertigo ranges from negative sentiments to outright violence against black outsiders, including insults, humiliations, extortions, searches, arrests, detentions, deportations, tortures, rapes, beatings, and killings. Ironically, the victims are not only the outsiders against whom the code is mobilized but also the insiders who mobilize it. UK. ASHGATE.

Presented in the form of biographies centring on a number of men, women and families varying in status and race, this provides a vivid survey of the Cape of Good Hope at the end of the Dutch period, during a period of rapid and dramatic development and change for the colony. Its aim is to sketch the develop-ment of the Dutch colony at the Cape in the eighteenth century through the lives of eighteen individuals and families, primarily for the benefit of non-specialist and non-South African readers. 350pp, SOUTH AFRICA. PROTEA BOOK HOUSE.

In the aftermath of explosive civil wars in Africa during the 1990s and 2000s, the establishment of multi-party elections has often been heralded by the West as signalling the culmination of the conflict and the beginning of a period of democratic rule. However, the outcomes of these elections are very rarely uniform, with just as many countries returning to conflict as not. Here, David Harris uses the examples of Sierra Leone and Liberia to examine the nexus of international and domestic politics in these post-conflict elections. In doing so, he comes to the conclusion that it is political, rather than legal, solutions that are more likely to enhance any positive political change that has emerged from the violence. This book is thus of significance to Western and African policy makers, and also to students and scholars who wish to engage with the critical issues of conflict resolution and reconciliation both in Sierra Leone and Liberia in particular and in the wider region in general. 304pp, UK. I B TAURIS.

Shows how increasing urbanization and growing poverty levels mean that it is imperative to ask how climate change might impact on asset accumulation and food security for the urban poor. It demon-strates how these three, often separate foci, can be brought together to frame a holistic urban adaptation approach. Furthermore, although much has been written about climate change, limited evidence exists in southern Africa of how climate change has been integrated in urban planning. The authors explore the urban climate change nexus linking asset adaptation, climate change science and food security through several case study cities. These include Cape Town, George and Khara Hais (South Africa), Lusaka (Zambia), Maputo (Mozambique), Mombasa (Kenya) and Harare (Zimbabwe). The results shed light on how this nexus might be explored from different perspectives, both theoretical and practical, in order to plan for a more resilient future. 224pp, UK. EARTHSCAN.

Why has the economic growth performance of Sub-Saharan Africa been disappointing on balance over the past 50 years? More importantly, what can be done to reverse that trend and to sustain and improve upon the accelerated growth experienced in recent years? What are the possibilities and policies for Africa to reduce poverty and achieve sustained, rapid economic growth? What are the lessons of success in both Africa and elsewhere? Could some of the policies that proved so successful in East Asia help reverse the deindustrialization of Africa in the past three decades and be the basis of its structural transformation? These were the questions posed to a diverse group of experts on development convened by the Initiative for Policy Dialogue (IPD). This volume reflects the highlights of their delibera-tions. It broadens the policy debate, expands the policy options, and proposes alternative development strategies. 616pp, UK. OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS.

Documents a decade of research, methodological innovation, and lessons learned in an eco-regional research-for-development program operating in the eastern African highlands, the African Highlands Initiative (AHI). It does this through reflections of the protagonists themselves, AHI site teams and partners applying action research to development innovation as a means to enhance the impact of their research. The book summarizes the experiences of farmers, research and development workers and policy and decision-makers who have interacted within an innovation system with the common goal of implementing an integrated approach to natural resource management (NRM) in the humid highlands. This book demonstrates the crucial importance of approach in shaping the outcomes of research and development, and distils lessons learned on what works, where and why. It is enriched with examples and case studies from five benchmark sites in Ethiopia, Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania, whose variability provides the reader with an in-depth knowledge of the complexities of integrated NRM in agro-ecosystems that play an important role in the rural economy of the region. It is shown that the struggle to achieve sustainable agricultural development in challenging environments is a complex one, and can only be effectively achieved through combined efforts and commitment of individuals and institutions with complementary roles. 340pp, UK. EARTHSCAN.

Explores the religious history of Ethiopia and Eritrea. It builds on Gustav Arn's original account of the origins and development of evangelical Protestantism in the countries, recovering some of the same ground and carrying the story forward to include an account of the fate of the mission and the church, which was in large part the outcome of the heyday of Italian colonialism in Eritrea from the mid-1920s to 1935. 520pp, USA. RED SEA PRESS.

When socialism collapsed in Tanzania in 1994, the government-controlled music industry gave way to a vibrant independent music scene. Alex Perullo explores the world of the bands, music distributors, managers, and clubs that attest to the lively and creative music industry in Dar es Salaam. Perullo examines the formation of the city's music economy, considering the means of musical production, distribution, protection, broadcasting, and performance. He exposes both legal and illegal strategies for creating business opportunities employed by entrepreneurs who battle government restrictions and give flight to their musical aspirations. This is a singular look at the complex music landscape in one of Africa's most dynamic cities. 496pp, USA. INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS.

This book explores the lived experiences of formerly colonized people in the privacy of their homes, communities, workplaces, and classrooms, and the associations created from these social interactions. It examines the centrality of gender and social identity in the formation of non-western people in the British Empire. 304pp, UK. PALGRAVE.

New in paperback. Pull up a chair and join Mma Ramotswe at the table as she celebrates the flavours of the bestselling series The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency. Discover the favourite recipes of our 'traditionally built' heroine and her friends, accompanied by lavish photography - sumptuous stews for sharing, fabulous fruit cakes for eating under shady trees, with redbush tea of course, and the spices, traditions and culture of Botswana that make every meal together special. Photographs by Mats Ögren Wanger and Ulf Nermark. Foreword by Alexander McCall Smith. 144pp, UK. POLYGON.

Tells the life story of the South African jazz vocalist Sathima Bea Benjamin. Born in Cape Town in the 1930s, Benjamin came to know American jazz and popular music through the radio, movies, records, and live stage and dance band performances. She was especially moved by the voice of Billie Holiday. With Dollar Brand/Abdullah Ibrahim, she left South Africa in 1962 for Europe, where they met and recorded with Duke Ellington. Benjamin and Ibrahim spent their lives on the move between Europe, the United States, and South Africa until 1977, when they left Africa for New York City and declared their support for the African National Congress. In New York, Benjamin established her own record company and recorded her own music independently from Abdullah. This book, which includes a CD, reflects twenty years of archival research and conversation between Benjamin and the South African musicolo-gist Carol Ann Muller. The narrative of Benjamin's life, as well as the political and musical contexts in which it has unfolded, is interspersed with Muller's reflections on the vocalist's story and its implications for jazz history. 376pp, USA. DUKE UNIVERSITY PRESS.

Although Islam is not new to West Africa, new patterns of domestic economies, the promise of political liberalization, and the proliferation of new media have led to increased scrutiny of Islam in the public sphere. Dorothea E. Schulz shows how new media have created religious communities that are far more publicly engaged than they were in the past. Muslims and New Media in West Africa expands ideas about religious life in West Africa, women's roles in religion, religion and popular culture, the meaning of religious experience in a charged environment, and how those who consume both religion and new media view their public and private selves. 320pp, USA. INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS.

This final report describes the study of an exceptionally well-preserved Iron Age building discovered in northern Burkina Faso, West Africa. The site of Oursi hu-beero, meaning the big house of Oursi in the locally spoken Songhay language, was excavated in 2000 and 2001 by a scientific team from the universities of Frankfurt am Main and Ouagadougou. It is situated in the middle of a group of settlement mounds, nearby the modern village of Oursi. In the year 2000, deep erosion gullies were threatening the architectural remains on the surface, which were provisionally dated to the 10th century AD. Scholars from both universities saw the importance of this site and undertook immediate action. But even they were not prepared for what they uncovered under only one metre of destruction debris. The rich diversity of incredible finds in the 25 different rooms rendered their exposure of enormous importance for the archaeology and history of Burkina Faso. Complete storage jars, metal equipment, wooden furniture, rope and textile fragments, grinding stones and charred botanical remains are only a fraction of the total assemblage of finds. Although we are dealing with the results of a single occupation phase and from one building only, the density of finds, the preservation of the architecture and the absence of later distur-bances add considerably to our understanding of daily life in this part of West Africa. Up to now the limited contextual information about life in villages and towns prior to the historical periods has promoted divergent and weakly argued interpretations. This volume breaks open new grounds of investigation and calls for further study. 282pp, UK. SIDESTONE PRESS.

Looks at the political and social history of the Gold Coast in West Africa from the early 16th century to the second half of the 18th. The book examines how political entities in Nzema were structured territorially, as well as the formation of ruling groups and aspects of their political, economic, and military actions. Translated from the Italian by Allan Cameron. 304pp, UK. PALGRAVE.

An investigation of the emergence of complex purchasable associations in the Cross River region of southwest Cameroon and southeast Nigeria. These associations emerged in the context of the growing transatlantic hinterland and were disseminated from the direction of the Atlantic coast to the hinterland. Associations form a substantial part of the prestige economy in the Cross River cultures up until the present. 440pp, USA. AFRICA WORLD PRESS.

The Anglo-Egyptian re-conquest of Sudan has been well chronicled from the British point of view, but we still know little about its front line troops, the Sudanese soldiers of the Egyptian Army. Making use of unpublished primary sources and published material located in the United Kingdom and Sudan, this book provides an historiographic correction. It argues that nineteenth-century Sudanese slave soldiers were social beings and historical actors, shaping both European and African destinies, just as their own lives were being transformed by imperial forces. The book explores the complex nature of Sudanese soldier identity and social condition, daily life and conditions of service, and the unique character and scope of interactions between Sudanese soldiers and their British comrades. It goes on to highlight both the decisive military role played by Sudanese troops throughout the war, and the many non-combat roles these men occupied during the campaign, as translators, military recruiters, and ethnic ambassadors. It concludes with an epilogue detailing the 1900 Sudanese mutiny at Omdurman. 245pp, UK. JAMES CURREY PUBLISHERS.

A pioneering study of the sacred music of three coloured (the apartheid designation for people not white or native) people's church congregations in the rural town of Graaff-Reinet, South Africa. Jorritsma's fieldwork involves an investigation of the choruses, choir music, and hymns of the Karoo region to present a history of the people's traditional, religious, and cultural identity in song. This music is examined as part of a living archive preserved by the community in the face of a legacy of slavery and colonial as well as apartheid oppression. Jorritsma's findings counteract a lingering stereotype that coloured music is inferior to European or African music and that coloured people should not or do not have a cultural identity. this book seeks to eradicate that bias and articulate a more legitimate place for these people in the contemporary landscape of South Africa. 216pp, USA. TEMPLE UNIVERSITY PRESS.

Post-colonial South Asia and Africa invite comparison: along with their political boundaries, they inherited from colonial regimes administrative languages, a cluster of sovereign state institutions and modern economic nuclei. When they became independent, South Asian and African states were - for all their diversity - thrust into a common position in the international system, and embarked on a common history as 'emergent', 'non-aligned', 'developing nations'. This is the first book to offer a single-volume compara-tive history of postcolonial South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa in the first generation since independ-ence. 472pp, UK. PALGRAVE.

International media coverage in the 1960s and early 1970s represented the Biafran War, in which the state of Biafra attempted to secede from the Nigerian Federation, as a grand humanitarian disaster, characterised by sustained conflict, starvation and genocide. Using interviews and newly-released archival material, Michael Gould questions this depiction, examining the role of foreign parties in the conflict and the impact of propaganda upon its international reception both during and after the war. Envisaged initially by both sides as a short conflict, the war confounded all expectations, stretching on for four years. It was a 'brother's war', one which divided families, and was characterised overwhelmingly by both sides' reluctance to enter into hostilities. This book seeks to answer some of the most fundamen-tal questions surrounding the conflict, including how this avoidable conflict came about, why the war became so drawn-out and how the leadership of the opposing Generals Ojukwu, who led the Biafran revolt and Gowon, who was President of the Nigerian Federation, defined the conflict. In the process, Gould offers a radical reappraisal of the many entrenched conceptions which currently surround the conflict. 272pp, UK. I B TAURIS.

Published to coincide with the 150th anniversary of Indian immigration to South Africa, this anthology of extraordinary range and vigor is as moving and diverse as the people and land that inspired it. Written by former activists, celebrities, and academics, this compilation showcases both the tragic and the comedic aspects of the early life of an immigrant. 274pp, SOUTH AFRICA. STE PUBLISHERS.

Navigates the problems and prospects of ‘prometheusis’ in creative cultural productions. Artists, writers, musicians, and other creative practitioners share icons, ideas, images, and paraphernalia across cultures, mediums, and disciplines in many ways including borrowing, copying, adoption, adaptation, abbreviation, distortion, and even outright pilfering. Their reasons for sharing creative elements range from admiration to subversion, pedagogical innovation, criticism, hegemony, revenge, anger, fear, malice, and even pathology. Once shared these artistic materials become links and crossroads that complicate creativity and culture with prometheusis. But what is prometheusis? How does it work and how is it evaluated? Drawing on the visual arts, this book elaborates on prometheusis as a general theory of cultural exchange, productivity, and analysis. Examples focus on the intersections and frontiers of western modernity and African art. 354pp, USA. UNIVERSITY OF ROCHESTER PRESS.

Compared with Iraq, Afghanistan and Kosovo, the recent western intervention in Sierra Leone has been largely forgotten. When the State Fails rectifies this, providing a comprehensive and critical analysis of the intervention. The civil war in Sierra Leone began in 1991 and was declared officially over in 2002 after UK, UN and regional African military intervention. Some claimed it as a case of successful humanitarian intervention. The authors in this collection provide an informed analysis of the impact of the intervention on democracy, development and society in Sierra Leone. The authors take a particularly critical view of the imposition of neoliberalism after the conflict. As NATO intervention in Libya shows the continued use of external force in internal conflicts, When the State Fails is a timely book for all students and scholars interested in Africa and the question of humanitarian intervention. 304pp, UK. PLUTO PRESS.

This book examines women and leadership in West Africa, with a special focus on Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leonethe Mano River Union countries. These countries have traditions of indigenous female leadership in executive positions in varying degrees, and all three have a tradition of organizations that form important power bases for women. 284pp, UK. PALGRAVE.

Fifth edition. Zambia is one of the best destinations in Africa for walking and river safaris, hot springs and waterfalls. This fifth, fully updated edition leads visitors through all the prime attractions set in their historical and environmental context from the newly declared Ngonye Falls National Park, through the Sioma Ngwezi National Park to the famous Luangwa Park, host to several unique species and an ideal place for leopard-spotting. It includes advice for the independent traveller: how to bush camp in comfort, survival techniques for canoe encounters with hippos or crocodiles as well as guidance on all-terrain driving. With detailed reviews of lodges, hotels and campsites, plus 51 maps and GPS coordinates, Bradt's Zambia is the essential travel companion for anyone going to this under-explored safari destination. Index, col photos, maps, 560pp, UK. BRADT PUBLICATIONS.