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Africa Why Economists Get It Wrong by...
Brief Summary
Not so long ago, Africa was being described as the hopeless continent. Recently, though, talk has turned to Africa rising, with enthusiastic voices exclaiming the potential for economic growth across many of its countries.
What, then, is the truth behind Africa's growth, or lack of it? In this provocative book, Morten Jerven fundamentally reframes the debate, challenging mainstream accounts of African economic history.
Whilst for the past two decades experts have focused on explaining why there has been a 'chronic failure of growth' in Africa, Jerven shows that most African economies have been growing at a rapid pace since the mid-nineties.
In addition, African economies grew rapidly in the fifties, the sixties, and even into the seventies. Thus, African states were dismissed as incapable of development based largely on observations made during the 1980s and early 1990s. The result has been misguided analysis, and few practical lessons learned.
This is an essential account of the real impact economic growth has had on Africa, and what it means for the continent's future.
ISBN:9781783601332
Author:Morten Jerven
An Illustrated Guide Medicinal plants...
Medicinal Plants of East Africa is a fully illustrated guide to 136 East African plants with important medicinal applications. Initially released in 2010, this fully revised edition updates the species descriptions, photographs and range of medicinal uses, and expands on the pharmacological properties of the plant parts.
Supported by more than 600 photographs, the book:
• describes the characters and ecology of each plant to aid identification
• lists indigenous names of species in 92 languages spoken in the region
• details the medicinal uses of the different plant parts by drawing on traditional knowledge
• includes recipes for the preparation and administration of remedies used to treat common ailments and afflictions
• discusses the active chemical compounds found in each plant to explain and unpack the healing properties at work
Covering Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda, this volume is a vital addition to the bookshelves of botanists, health and wellness practitioners, students, travelers, and all who have an interest in the healing properties of plants.
Tourism Development in Kenya Critical...
Brief Summary
Tourism, which was once Kenya’s top foreign exchange earner, has suffered a big slum in the past decade. Various reasons can be given for this. The post-election violence witnessed in 2007, lack of investment in the sector, poaching and, more recently, security challenges posed by the unending terrorist attacks in the country, are all sending the development of the sector in the wrong direction.
It was time someone took a critical look at the industry. The book Tourism Development of Kenya: Critical Issues, Challenges & Alternatives in the New Millennium comes at a time when everyone is looking for solutions for the ailing sector.
Authored by Prof John Akama and published by East Africa Educational Publishers, the book covers various perspectives on tourism development in Kenya. It is a synthesis and critical analysis of economic, social, political, cultural and environmental issues that affect the development of tourism in Kenya and other African countries.
ISBN:Tourism Development in Kenya001
Author:John Akama
Whatever You Do Dont Run True Tales o...
Brief Summary
A hilarious, highly original collection of essays based on the Botswana truism: "only food runs!" In the tradition of Bill Bryson, a new writer brings us the lively adventures and biting wit of an African safari guide. Peter Allison gives us the guide's-eye view of living in the bush, confronting the world's fiercest terrain of wild animals and, most challenging of all, managing herds of gaping tourists.
Passionate for the animals of the Kalahari, Allison works as a top safari guide in the wildlife-rich Okavango Delta. As he serves the whims of his wealthy clients, he often has to stop the impulse to run as far away from them as he can, as these tourists are sometimes more dangerous than a pride of lions. No one could make up these outrageous-but-true tales: the young woman who rejected the recommended safari-friendly khaki to wear a more "fashionable" hot pink ensemble; the lost tourist who happened to be drunk, half-naked, and a member of the British royal family; establishing a real friendship with the continent's most vicious animal; the Japanese tourist who requested a repeat performance of Allison's being charged by a lion so he could videotape it; and spending a crazy night in the wild after blowing a tire on a tour bus, revealing that Allison has as much good-natured scorn for himself.
The author's humor is exceeded only by his love and respect for the animals, and his goal is to limit any negative exposure to humans by planning trips that are minimally invasive--unfortunately it doesn't always work out that way! Peter Allison is originally from Sydney, Australia. His safaris have been featured in National Geographic, Conde Nast Traveler, and on television programs such as Jack Hanna's Animal Adventures. He travels frequently to speaking appearances, and splits most of his time between Botswana, Sydney, and San Francisco.
ISBN:9780762745654
Author:Peter Allison
Elections and the Media in Post Confl...
Brief Summary
Over the past ten years, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi, Chad, Central African Republic, Republic of Congo and Rwanda all organized pluralist elections in a post conflict context, having experienced an armed conflict which either interrupted or prevented democratization processes.
These polls were organized with the support of the international community, which viewed them as a crucial step in the peace-building process. The local media's role throughout was supposed to be to ensure that an electoral process is actually 'free and fair' - a role that becomes even more crucial in countries where the media have previously being perceived as warmongers or peace-builders in the conflicts.
Giving a voice to African journalists and analysing the work they have been publishing or broadcasting during these elections, African media specialist Marie-Soleil Frere explores if and how the local media fulfilled their duties. In doing so, the book reveals journalists' professional challenges at a time when much is expected from the media, as well as the intense political pressure faced that can make their work particularly difficult. Insightful and comprehensive, Elections and the Media in Post-Conflict Africa underlines both the importance and the fragility of the role of the media in a democratic system.
ISBN:9781780321066
Author:Marie Soleil Frere
Kintu by Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi
Brief Summary
Uganda’s history reimagined through the cursed bloodline of the Kintu clan in an award-winning debut.
In 1750, Kintu Kidda unleashes a curse that will plague his family for generations. In this ambitious tale of a clan and of a nation, Makumbi weaves together the stories of Kintu’s descendants as they seek to break from the burden of their shared past and reconcile the inheritance of tradition and the modern world that is their future.
In 1754, Kintu Kidda, Ppookino of Buddu Province, in the kingdom of the Buganda, sets out on a journey to the capital where he is to pledge allegiance to the new kabaka of the realm. Along the way, a rash action in a moment of anger unleashes a curse that will plague his family for generations.
Time passes and the nation of Uganda is born. Through colonial occupation and the turbulent early years of independence, Kintu’s heirs survive the loss of their land, the denigration of their culture and the ravages of war. But the story of their ancestor and his twin wives Nnakato and Babirye endures. So too does the curse.
In this ambitious tale of a family and of a nation, Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi skilfully weaves together the stories of Kintu’s descendants as they seek to break with the burden of their shared past and to reconcile the inheritance of tradition and the modern world that is their future.
Darfur A New History of a Long War Ju...
Brief Summary
The humanitarian tragedy in Darfur has stirred politicians, Hollywood celebrities and students to appeal for a peaceful resolution to the crisis. Beyond the horrific pictures of sprawling refugee camps and lurid accounts of rape and murder lies a complex history steeped in religion, politics, and decades of internal unrest.
Darfur traces the origins, organization and ideology of the infamous Janjawiid and other rebel groups, including the Sudan Liberation Army and the Justice and Equality Movement. It also analyzes the confused responses of the Sudanese government and African Union.
This thoroughly updated edition also features a powerful analysis of how the conflict has been received in the international community and the varied attempts at peacekeeping.
ISBN:9781842779507
Author:Julie Flint and Alex de Waal
Swahili Origins Swahili Culture and T...
Brief Summary
Kiswahili has become the lingua franca of eastern Africa. Yet there can be few historic peoples whose identity is as elusive as that of the Swahili. Some have described themselves as Arabs, as Persians or even, in one place, as Portuguese.
It is doubtful whether, even today, most of the people about whom this book is written would unhesitatingly and in all contexts accept the name Swahili.
This book was central to the thought and lifework of the late James de Vere Allen. It is his major study of the origin of the Swahili and of their cultural identity. He focuses on how the African element in their cultural patrimony was first modified by Islam and later changed until many Swahili themselves lost sight of it.
They share a language and they share a culture. Their territory stretches from the coast of southern Somalia to the Lamu archipelago in Kenya, to the Rovuma River in modern Mozambique and out into the islands of the Indian Ocean. But they lack a shared historical experience.
James de Vere Allen, in this study of contentious originality, set out to give modern Swahili evidence of their shared history during a period of eight centuries.
ISBN:9780821410448
Author:James De Vere Allen
The Rift A New Africa Breaks Free by ...
Brief Summary
A vivid, powerful and controversial look at how the world gets Africa wrong, and how a resurgent Africa is forcing it to think again.
Africa has long been misunderstood--and abused--by outsiders. Correspondent Alex Perry traveled the continent for most of a decade, meeting with entrepreneurs and warlords, professors and cocaine smugglers, presidents and jihadis.
Beginning with a devastating investigation into a largely unreported war crime-in 2011, when the US and the major aid agencies helped cause a famine in which 250,000 Somalis died-he finds Africa at a moment of furious self-assertion.
To finally win their freedom, Africans must confront three last false prophets-Islamists, dictators and aid workers-who would keep them in their bonds.
Beautifully written, intimately reported, and sure to spark debate, THE RIFT passionately argues that a changing Africa revolutionizes our ideas of it, and of ourselves.
ISBN:9780316333771
Author:Alex Perry
I Tweet What I Like So Sue Me by Jack...
Brief Summary
Jackie Phamotse digs deep into the climate of law and policy in the social media landscape.
After a David and Goliath social media legal battle that saw many take note tweeting about her, the result is a brace, thought-provoking and remarkably detailed social media guide and personal narrative.
A first-hand approach on beating public humiliation and cyber victimization, Phamotse combines personal anecdotes, hard data and compelling research to cut through an unjust system governed by the rich and famous. The author directly addresses the question of power and obsession related to social media influencers.
Written with equal doses of humor, compassion and wisdom, I Tweet What I Like is an inspiring call to action, celebrating diversity and human potential. I Tweet What I Like will inspire you!
ISBN:9780620814751
Author:Jackie Phamotse
Bare by Jackie Phamotse
Brief Summary
Bare: The Blesser’s Game
Treasure is a naïve dreamer tossed into this unforgiving reality. Intent on supporting herself, she walks out of her dysfunctional family home in Westonaria and straight into the greedy heart of Jo’burg, disguised as the city of gold and black diamonds, to chase the illusion of fame and a happy ending.
Living a life of luxury in a society of artificial human beings comes at a hefty price.
She is wooed by a wealthy man who grooms her into a power-hungry machine... but is the pleasure worth the pain and endless sacrifices? What can she offer a man who has everything but a soul?
As her life crumbles around her, can Treasure alter her fate before it’s too late? This inspirational novel is for all those who see one side to life; it's time to open your eyes to both sides of the coin.
ISBN:9781928276661
Author:Jackie Phamotse
Leopard at the Door by Paul McVeigh
Brief Summary
After six years in England, Rachel has returned to Kenya and the farm where she spent her childhood, but the beloved home she’d longed for is much changed. Her father’s new companion—a strange, intolerant woman—has taken over the household.
The political climate in the country grows more unsettled by the day and is approaching the boiling point. And looming over them all is the threat of the Mau Mau, a secret society intent on uniting the native Kenyans and overthrowing the whites.
As Rachel struggles to find her place in her home and her country, she initiates a covert relationship, one that will demand from her a gross act of betrayal. One man knows her secret, and he has made it clear how she can buy his silence. But she knows something of her own, something she has never told anyone. And her knowledge brings her power.
ISBN:9780399158254
Author:Jennifer McVeigh
Gorillas in the Mist by Dian Fossey
Brief Summary
Gorillas in the Mist: A Remarkable Story of Thirteen Years Spent Living with the Greatest of the Great Apes
Dian Fossey's classic account of four gorilla families; the basis for the major movie starring Sigourney Weaver.
For thirteen years Dian Fossey lived and worked with Uncle Bert, Flossie, Beethoven, Pantsy and Digit in the remote rain forests of the volcanic Virunga Mountains in Africa, establishing an unprecedented relationship with these shy and affectionate beasts.
In her base camp, 10,000 feet above sea-level, she struggled daily with rain, loneliness and the ever-constant threat of poachers who slaughtered her beloved gorillas with horrifying ferocity.
African adventure, personal quest and scientific study, Gorillas in the Mist is a unique and intimate glimpse into a vanishing world and a vanishing species.
ISBN:9780753811412
Author:Dian Fossey
Rainbows End A Memoir of Childhood Wa...
Brief Summary
This is a story about a paradise lost. . . . About an African dream that began with a murder . . .In 1978, in the final, bloodiest phase of the Rhodesian civil war, eleven-year-old Lauren St John moves with her family to Rainbow's End, a wild, beautiful farm and game reserve set on the banks of a slow flowing river. The house has been the scene of a horrific attack by guerrillas, and when Lauren's family settles there, a chain of events is set in motion that will change her life irrevocably.
"Rainbow's End" captures the overwhelming beauty and extraordinary danger of life in the African bush. Lauren's childhood reads like a girl's own adventure story. At the height of the war, Lauren rides through the wilderness on her horse, Morning Star, encountering lions, crocodiles, snakes, vicious ostriches, and mad cows. Many of the animals are pets, including Miss Piggy and Bacon and an elegant giraffe named Jenny. The constant threat of ruthless guerrillas prowling the land underscores everything, making each day more dangerous, vivid, and prized than the last.
After Independence, Lauren comes to the bitter realization that she'd been on the wrong side of the civil war. While she and her family believed that they were fighting for democracy over Communism, others saw the war as black against white. And when Robert Mugabe comes into power, he oversees the torture and persecution of thousands of members of an opposing tribe and goes on to become one of Africa's legendary dictators. The ending of this beautiful memoir is a fist to the stomach as Lauren realizes that she can be British or American, but she cannot be African. She can love it -- be willing to die for it -- but she cannot claimAfrica because she is white.
ISBN:9780743286794
Author:Lauren St John
Uncertain Tastes Memory Ambivalence a...
Brief Summary
This richly drawn ethnography of Samburu cattle herders in northern Kenya examines the effects of an epochal shift in their basic diet-from a regimen of milk, meat, and blood to one of purchased agricultural products. In his innovative analysis, Jon Holtzman uses food as a way to contextualize and measure the profound changes occurring in Samburu social and material life.
He shows that if Samburu reaction to the new foods is primarily negative?they are referred to disparagingly as "gray food” and "government food”?it is also deeply ambivalent. For example, the Samburu attribute a host of social maladies to these dietary changes, including selfishness and moral decay.
Yet because the new foods save lives during famines, the same individuals also talk of the triumph of reason over an antiquated culture and speak enthusiastically of a better life where there is less struggle to find food. Through detailed analysis of a range of food-centered arenas, Uncertain Tastes argues that the experience of food itself?symbolic, sensuous, social, and material-is intrinsically characterized by multiple and frequently conflicting layers.
ISBN:9780520257375
Author:Jon Holtzman
Kwame Nkrumahs liberation thought by ...
Brief Summary
Kwame Nkrumah's Liberation Thought: A Paradigm for Religious Advocacy in Contemporary Ghana
An attempt to recapture the liberation philosophy of Kwame Nkrumah, first prime minister of Ghana. Owusu seeks to define a theoretical basis on which a modern socio-political and ethical structure for Ghana can be built and offers a paradigm for developing a role of advocacy to the Ghanaian religious edifice.
He also strives to recapitulate Ghana's self-dignity, self-realisation and self-subsistence by highlighting the essential assumptions, dimensions and specificities of African personhood.
ISBN:9781592213122
Author:Robert Yaw Owusu
Africas Challenge Using Law for Good ...
Brief Summary
The African continent exceeds in size and natural resources the combined territories of Europe, the United States and China. Yet most Africans must struggle for bare survival. The authors of this book s chapters describe different African countries experiences, underscoring the need to use law to transform Africa s inherited institutions.
Chapter 2 outlines institutionalist legislative theory and methodology as a guide for designing laws to achieve good governance and people-oriented development. Raymond Atuguba describes how, for almost half a century after independence, Ghana s police force still mainly buttressed elite state power. Atuguba and his colleagues, working through the Legal Resources Centre, eventually hope to propose legislation to promote all Ghanaians welfare.
Teodosio Uate s chapter demonstrates how, despite a 1997 law calling for citizen engagement in environmental protection, the inherited drafting system had thwarted the drafters attempts to prescribe clearly and precisely what officials must do to realize popular participation. Neva Makgetla describes South Africa s post-apartheid governmental efforts to restructure the massive inequalities imposed by the preceding regime.
Inherited administrative institutions too often excluded from decision-making the new government s core constituencies the working people, the unemployed, and the poor in general Lucian Ng andwe justifies his proposed law to establish a Zambian Commission on Law and National Integrated Development.
That Commission would conduct research and design and submit bills, accompanied by reports of the facts logically-organized, to demonstrate, that those bills detailed provisions would facilitate transformation of the inherited institutions that today perpetuate Zambia s poverty, vulnerability and poor governance.
ISBN:9781592214716
Author:Ann Willcox Seidman
Americas Covert War in East Africa Su...
Brief Summary
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. As a result of her work exposing abuses carried out by regional governments and their international partners, Clara was deported from Kenya and Uganda and is currently persona non grata in both countries.
Her book sets out the historical background to today's covert war, including the early Somali jihads and British repression in colonial Kenya, through to the 1998 US Embassy Bombings in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, and President Clinton's early rendition programme. America's Covert War in East Africa then looks at the US Military's new Africa Command, with its emphasis on counterterrorism, alongside increasing use of targeted killings by security forces in the region, and continued renditions and secret detention.
Finally, Usiskin investigates the shorter and longer term consequences of such intensive militarisation, and the proliferation of surveillance and other technologies of control in East Africa and its surrounding waters, focusing in particular on their impact on vulnerable ethnic and religious groups in a highly volatile region.
ISBN:9781849044134
Author:Clara Usiskin
No fist is big enough to hide the sky...
Brief Summary
No Fist Is Big Enough to Hide the Sky: The Liberation of Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde, 1963-74
Basil Davidson ranks as one of the most remarkable Africanist historians of his generation. A leading authority on Portuguese Africa who witnessed many of these events first-hand, Davidson draws on his own extensive experience in the country as well as the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC) archives to provide a detailed and rigorous analysis of the conflict.
The result, No Fist is Big Enough to Hide the Sky, still stands as a key text in the history of the eleven-year struggle against Portuguese rule in Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde.
Less well known than the struggles in Angola and Mozambique, the liberation war waged by the PAIGC, as Davidson shows, easily ranks alongside those conflicts as an example of an African independence movement triumphing against overwhelming odds.
The book provides one of the earliest accounts of the assassination of the PAIGC's founder, Amilcar Cabral, and documents the movement's remarkable success in recovering from the death of its leader and in eventually attaining independence. An invaluable resource for the study both of the region and of African liberation struggles as a whole, this edition features a new preface by Cape Verde's first president, Aristides Pereira, and a new foreword by Cabral himself.
ISBN:9780905762890
Author:Basil Davidson
The Land Is Ours Black Lawyers and th...
Brief Summary
The Land Is Ours tells the story of South Africa’s first black lawyers, who operated in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In an age of aggressive colonial expansion, land dispossession and forced labour, these men believed in a constitutional system that respected individual rights and freedoms, and they used the law as an instrument against injustice.
The book follows the lives, ideas and careers of Henry Sylvester Williams, Alfred Mangena, Richard Msimang, Pixley ka Isaka Seme, Ngcubu Poswayo and George Montsioa, who were all members of the ANC. It analyses the legal cases they took on, explores how they reconciled the law with the political upheavals of the day, and considers how they sustained their fidelity to the law when legal victories were undermined by politics.
The Land Is Ours shows that these lawyers developed the concept of a Bill of Rights, which is now an international norm. The book is particularly relevant in light of current calls to scrap the Constitution and its protections of individual rights: it clearly demonstrates that, from the beginning, the struggle for freedom was based on the idea of the rule of law.
ISBN:9781776092857
Author:Tembeka Ngcukaitobi