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The Power Of Babel Language and Gover...
Brief Summary
Noted Kenyan scholar, author, and educator Ali A. Mazrui, creator of the groundbreaking PBS series The Africans, teams up with his son Alamin to examine the complexities and contradictions of language and cultural identity on the African continent.
The Mazruis explore the challenges of native African languages surviving in countries where the political, economic, and technological discourses are conducted in Eurocentric languages such as English, French, Spanish, and Portuguese. "This linguistic state of affairs," they argue, has resulted from "the failure of African people to be nationalistic enough in linguistic terms." The Power of Babel recounts the history and impact of oral traditions, as well as the influence of Arabic, Christian, and Semitic-based growths in literacy and the imposition of the European concept of the nation-state.
The authors also detail the role African American and Afro-Saxon English speakers could play in "African counter-penetration," using English to better educate the West about Africa. This timely and important treatise also finds room to incorporate discussion of such wide-ranging subject matters as James Baldwin, Frantz Fanon, and the rise of Ebonics. --Eugene Holley Jr.
ISBN:9780852558089
Author:Ali A Mazrui and Alamin Mazrui
Thabo Mbeki and the Battle for the So...
Brief Summary
Thabo Mbeki plays a crucial role in world politics, but to many people he is an enigma. In this book Gumede pulls together his insights from years of reporting on the Mbeki presidency to create a sophisticated but easy-to-read account of power in South Africa.
He explores the complex position that Mbeki occupies and reveals the underlying political and personal tensions that help explain the forces that have created one of the world's most powerful and enigmatic leaders.
Covering Mbeki's attempts to modernize the economy and kick-start an African Renaissance, and investigating his controversial stance on issues from AIDS to Zimbabwe, the book offers invaluable insights into the arcane machinations behind political decisions that touch the lives of millions every day.
ISBN:9781842778487
Author:William Mervin Gumede
Crucible of the Ages Essays in Honour...
Brief Summary
Essays In Honour of Wole Soyinka at 80, edited by two award-winning African writers is a celebration of the literary life of Wole Soyinka at an important stage in his life.
The volume provides the most extensive anthology ever produced on Africa's first Nobel Laureate in Literature and features 30 essays with a foreword by the former secretary general of the Commonwealth, Chief Emeka Anyaoku. With contributions from three Nobel Laureates: Toni Morrison, Nadine Gordimer and Derek Walcott and other contributions from African leaders, scholars, writers and literary critics from around the world, they assess Soyinka's perspectives on power, politics and the arts to create dialogue and debate.
Diverse aspects of his life are reflected in six themes in this volume that also documents the literary and cultural histories of West Africa from the 1950s to the present day.
The Kenyan writer Ngugi wa Thiong'o describes Soyinka as: " A writer and public intellectual, who has voiced his concerns over major happenings in different parts of the continent over the last fifty years and more, Soyinka has become the moral and democratic conscience of Africa."
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ISBN:9780956930798
Author:Ivor Agyeman Duah, Promise Ogochukwu Okekwe and Ayebia Clarke
Regional Integration Identity and Cit...
Brief Summary
The Greater Horn of Africa (GHA) is engulfed by three interrelated crises: various inter-state wars, civil wars, and inter-communal conflicts; an economic crisis manifested in widespread debilitating poverty, chronic food insecurity and famines; and environmental degradation that is ravaging the region.
While it is apparent that the countries of the region are unlikely to be able to deal with the crises individually, there is consensus that their chances of doing so improve markedly with collective regional action. The contributors to this volume address the need for regional integration in the GHA.
They identify those factors that can foster integration, such as the proper management of equitable citizenship rights, as well as examining those that impede it, including the region's largely ineffective integration scheme, IGAD, and explore how the former can be strengthened and the latter transformed; explain how regional integration can mitigate the conflicts; and examine how integration can help to energise the region's economy.
Kidane Mengisteab is Professor of African Studies and Political Science at Penn State University; Redie Bereketeab is a researcher at the Nordic Africa Institute, Sweden.
ISBN:9781847010582
Author:Kidane Mengisteab
Cooking with an African flavour Sapra...
Kamba customary law by D J Penwill
Gardening in Eastern Africa by Kenya ...
This is a practical guide book to gardening in the Eastern Africa region.
This practical guide to gardening in Eastern African region covers topics ranging from growing fruit and vegetables (including many local species) and gardening with indigenous plants, to ideas for designing your garden, and what to grow if you live in an apartment.
It contains many drawings and diagrams as well as nearly one thousand full color photographs.
Abyssinian Nomad by Maskarm Haile
Brief Summary
Abyssinian Nomad: An African woman's journey of love, loss, and adventure from Cape to Cairo
What does it take to know oneself? To fully realize one's life dream? For some it may take a lifetime, and for others, the chance may never come. There are those who dream and have the courage to take the first steps past the threshold of familiarity.
Their stories, like mine, are etched on the avenues we dare to traverse. The Cape to Cairo road is where I, a black female soul-searcher, faced my greatest trial in confronting my fear of losing my mother to cancer, trying to keep old love alive, and make my childhood dream come true.
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ISBN:9781775175704
Author:Maskarm Haile
This Mournable Body by Tsitsi Dangare...
A searing novel about the obstacles facing women in Zimbabwe, by one of the country’s most notable authors
Anxious about her prospects after leaving a stagnant job, Tambudzai finds herself living in a run-down youth hostel in downtown Harare.
For reasons that include her grim financial prospects and her age, she moves to a widow’s boarding house and eventually finds work as a biology teacher. But at every turn in her attempt to make a life for herself, she is faced with a fresh humiliation, until the painful contrast between the future she imagined and her daily reality ultimately drives her to a breaking point.
In This Mournable Body, Tsitsi Dangarembga returns to the protagonist of her acclaimed first novel, Nervous Conditions, to examine how the hope and potential of a young girl and a fledgling nation can sour over time and become a bitter and floundering struggle for survival.
As a last resort, Tambudzai takes an ecotourism job that forces her to return to her parents’ impoverished homestead. It is this homecoming, in Dangarembga’s tense and psychologically charged novel, that culminates in an act of betrayal, revealing just how toxic the combination of colonialism and capitalism can be.
Scribble Yourself Feminist by Chidera...
Brief Summary
This is the dream journal for every feminist babe out there!
This book is dedicated to the woman who wants a better world.
The woman who's a lover, a learner but most importantly, a leader.
Finally, here's your chance to scribble yourself feminist with this AMAZING journal, designed to empower, inspire and entertain.
From Chidera Eggerue, the woman behind The Slumflower and #saggyboobsmatter, and illustrated by Manjit Thapp, it's BEAUTIFUL, FUNNY, and FEMINIST.
What's included in this BRILLIANT journal??
ALL THIS:
• Colouring pages featuring Manjit's beautiful illustrations of inspirational quotes and feminist heroines from around the world.
• Witty comebacks for everyday sexism- 'cos the world needs to hear your sass!
• Design your feminist wardrobe- design your outfit for the next march; t shirts, badges, sashes and power panties you can make as fabulous as you are.
• Make your own 'Galentine's Day' card for the ladies you love
• Rewrite your favourite FEMI-CLASSICS- why can't the girl save the day for once??
• Create your own FEMINIST HALL OF FAME: draw your feminist heroes- imagine if every gallery had a feminist babes wing!
ISBN:9780241347737
Author:Chidera Eggerue
War Child A Child Soldiers Story by E...
Brief Summary
In the mid-1980s, Emmanuel Jal was a seven year old Sudanese boy, living in a small village with his parents, aunts, uncles, and siblings. But as Sudanese civil war moved closer with the Islamic government seizing tribal lands for water, oil, and other resources Jal’s family moved again and again, seeking peace.
Then, on one terrible day, Jal was separated from his mother, and later learned she had been killed; his father Simon rose to become a powerful commander in the Christian Sudanese Liberation Army, fighting for the freedom of Sudan. Soon, Jal was conscripted into that army, one of 10,000 child soldiers, and fought through two separate civil wars over nearly a decade.
But, remarkably, Jal survived, and his life began to change when he was adopted by a British aid worker. He began the journey that would lead him to change his name and to music: recording and releasing his own album, which produced the number one hip-hop single in Kenya, and from there went on to perform with Moby, Bono, Peter Gabriel, and other international music stars.
Shocking, inspiring, and finally hopeful, War Child is a memoir by a unique young man, who is determined to tell his story and in so doing bring peace to his homeland.
ISBN:9780312383220
Author:Emmanuel Jal
Amedeo The True Story of an Italians ...
Brief Summary
War-time love story set in Abyssinia, Eritrea and the Yemen 1935-1945. Amedeo Guillet is still alive and living in County Meath, Ireland. Khadija is lost.
This is the story of Amedeo Guillet – an Italian calvary officer who was sent out to Abyssinia as part of Mussolini’s army to establish and command a troupe of 2,000 Spahis – or Arabic calvary. He met and fell in love with Khadija – a beautiful Ethiopian Muslim. Together they held up the British lorries heaving up the mountain road to Asmara and blew up the important Ponte Aosta. Eventually captured, Amedeo went on the run disguised as an Arab, eventually making it to Yemen, only to be thrown in jail.
This is a rare view of the Second World War from an Italian perpective; particularly valuable are the chapters that tell the story of Italian resistance to the Nazis, and their subsequent withdrawal from Italy in 1943.
There are few stories more cinemagraphic than this – Fascist Italy, his early years in Ethiopia commanding the Cossack-like Spahis, the brutal Abyssinian war waged by the Duce, Italian and British colonial rivalry; Amedeo led the last ever cavalry charge the British army faced (Eritrea 1941 – they were massacred by tanks and sub-machine guns), defeat and guerrilla warfare against the British; then flight, disguised as an Arab, imprisonment in the Yemen and a great love lost as he leaves his beloved Khadija behind to face her future alone and returns to Italy, to his fiancée and a career as a distinguished Italian diplomat and Arabist.
Amedeo is still alive and living in County Meath, Ireland. Sebastian O’Kelly is a journalist for the Mail and Telegraph and has Amedeo’s full co-operation in writing this book.
This is a very valuable and absolutely stunning story, beautifully told by O’Kelly.
ISBN:9780006552475
Author:Sebastian OKelly
Travels in the White Mans Grave by Do...
Brief Summary
At the beginning of the 1950s, the interior of West and Central Africa was still known to most of the outside world as the 'White Man's Grave' and consisted of vast expanses of mysterious and threatening primeval forest. When Donald MacIntosh, 23-year-old Gaelic-speaking Scottish forester, was offered a position in Nigeria in 1954, it was a dream come true and he found himself posted to the hot, cloying humidity of those fabled lands.
During the next 30 years he was to wander through some of the most remote areas of West Africa where he operated as a forest botanist. There he listened to the tales of ancient Africa from the lips of hunters, fishermen, chiefs and witch doctors from a vast diversity of tribes in myriad encampments. He drank palm wine with them and attended their village dances and ceremonies under the tropic moon.
He had many adventures with the creatures of the forest, from the magnificent leopard to the instantly fatal spitting cobra. The sinister arcanum of primitive Africa is never too far away from the surface in this book, encountering a host of characters along the way - with exotic names like 'Magic T. Sperm' and 'Famous Sixpence' - whose stories are all told here.
ISBN:9781897784839
Author:Donald Macintosh
I Did not Do It for You How the World...
Brief Summary
Scarred by decades of conflict and occupation, the craggy African nation of Eritrea has weathered the world's longest-running guerrilla war. The dogged determination that secured victory against Ethiopia, its giant neighbor, is woven into the national psyche, the product of cynical foreign interventions.
Fascist Italy wanted Eritrea as the springboard for a new, racially pure Roman empire; Britain sold off its industry for scrap; the United States needed a base for its state-of-the-art spy station; and the Soviet Union used it as a pawn in a proxy war.
In I Didn't Do It for You, Michela Wrong reveals the breathtaking abuses this tiny nation has suffered and, with a sharp eye for detail and a taste for the incongruous, tells the story of colonialism itself and how international power politics can play havoc with a country's destiny.
A pastoral democracy by Ioan Lewis
Brief Summary
A Pastoral Democracy: A study of pastoralism and politics among the Northern Somali of the Horn of Africa (1961, reprinted with a new introduction in 1982)
First published in 1961, shortly after establishment of the independent Somali Republic, the first step towards the formation of a 'Greater Somalia', brought this North-East African Muslim nation a prominence which it had not enjoyed since the British campaigns against the 'Mad Mullah' in the first two decades of the twentieth century. Somali nationalism, however, cannot be properly understood without a knowledge of the indigenous social organization.
This study by a social anthropologist describes the political system of the Northern Somali nomads in their arid ecological setting, where competition for access to water and pasture, especially in the dry season, is acute and leads to frequent and often long-drawn-out feuds. In this warlike society political status depends very largely on numerical strength.
Political loyalties based on kinship are organized through a form of Social Contract which distinguishes the pastoral Somali political system from otherwise similar political structures. Today this traditional organization is being challenged in areas where cultivation has recently been adopted, and in towns which are the foci of modern developments.
Somali nationalism, drawing much of its strength from the unifying force of Islam, is an important factor. With the continued dedication of the majority of the population to pastoral nomadism, however, traditional clan and contractual loyalties inevitably play an important part in party politics. This analysis has proved to be of interest not only to anthropologists and Africanists, but also to students of Islamic society and of comparative political institutions.
ISBN:9783825830847
Author:Ioan Lewis
Making and Breaking States in Africa ...
Brief Summary
This book analyzes crucial episodes in the recent political history of the Somali people. In their complicated dialogue with "modernity", the Somalis illustrate the extremes of modern African statehood. In contemporary "Somalia" which, for twenty years has not been a functional political reality, they have produced a failed state par excellence.
In the neighboring and smaller Somaliland Republic, however, they have achieved what is widely regarded as one of the more effective states in the continent.
Ironically while dysfunctional Somalia, despite its collapse, is still internationally recognized, functional Somaliland has yet to receive formal recognition
ISBN:9781569022900
Author:Ioan Lewis
Saints and Somalis Popular Islam in a...
Brief Summary
Popular Islam in a Clan Based Society. This collection of essays based on first-hand anthropological field research spanning many years, brings together in a single volume the authors collected material on characteristics of popular Islam amongst the Somali of the Horn of Africa.
Rigorous, outspoken, and backing his arguments with reflections based on a lifetime of research and scholarship, Lewis makes a major contribution to understanding the place and role of religion in Somali society.
ISBN:9781569021033
Author:Ioan M Lewis
Becoming Somaliland African Issues by...
Brief Summary
When does a country become a state? On 18 May 1991, the leaders of the Somali National Movement and the elders of northern Somali clans proclaimed that they were setting up the new Republic of Somaliland. Why has Somaliland not followed Somalia into 'state collapse'? Over the past fifteen years the people of Somaliland have peacefully and successfully managed a process of reconciliation, demobilisation, the restoration of law and order, economic recovery and reconstruction. Why has Somaliland yet to be recognised by the international community? The international system purports to promote 'good governance' in Africa.
Somaliland has had one of the most free series of elections in the region. Yet this new republic still has no international legal status, while Somalia, which has had no effective government since 1990, is still accorded de jure sovereignty. Should a unitary government be re-established for all of Somalia? Since the collapse of the Somali state international diplomacy has supported fourteen peace conferences, each focusing on re-establishing Somalia as a whole.
Yet it is Somaliland which challenges the typical image of war, disaster and social regression associated with this part of Africa since the 1990s. MARK BRADBURY is a development consultant who has worked extensively in North East Africa Published in association with Progressio; North America: Indiana U Press; South Africa: Jacana; Uganda: Fountain Publishers
ISBN:9781847013101
Author:Mark Bradbury
Understanding the Somalia Conflagrati...
Brief Summary
Somalia has been devastated by a US-backed Ethiopian invasion and years of civil war, and it has long been without a central government. Against this background of violence, Somali academic Afyare Abdi Elmi, attempts to explain the multiple dimensions of the conflict and find a peace-building consensus.
Somalia is a failed state and a Muslim state. This combination means the West assumes that it will become a breeding ground for extremism. The country regularly hits the headlines as a piracy hotspot. This combination of internal division and outside interference makes for an intensely hostile landscape. Elmi shows that only by addressing the problem of the statelessness in the country can the long process of peace begin. He highlights clan identities, Islam and other countries in the region as the key elements in any peace-building effort.
This unique account from an author who truly understands Somalia should be required reading for students and academics of international relations and peace / conflict studies.
ISBN:9780745329741
Author:Afyare Abdi Elmi
The Law of the Somalis A Stable Found...
Brief Summary
This book details many striking features of Somali customary law. It is compensatory, for example, rather than punitive. Instead of being imprisoned or otherwise punished, law breakers are required to compensate their victims. A victim seldom fails to receive compensation, moreover, because every Somali is insured by near kin against his or her liabilities under the law.
Being based on custom, Somali law has no need of legislation or legislators, hence is happily free of political influences. Even so, the author points out areas in the law that are in need of change. These do not require legislation, however; many desirable changes, such as ending restrictions on the sale of land and enhancing the status of women, are implicit in economic development. As for the Somali political system, not only is there no need to set up a democracy, the author clearly shows why any attempt to do so must inevitably produce chaos.
This book by a trained and sympathetic observer shows how, viewed in global perspective, Somali law stands with the Latin and Medieval laws and the English common law against the statutory law that originated in continental Europe with the modern nation state. It explains many seeming anomalies about present-day Somalia and describes its prospects as well as the dangers facing it. Born in Zeist, the Netherlands, in 1933, Michael van Notten graduated from Leiden University in Law and was admitted into practice in Rotterdam. He later served with a New York law firm and directed the Institution Europaeum, a Belgium-based policy research organization. In the early 1990s, he became interested in the prospect of Somalia developing in the modern world of a stateless society, and for the next twelve years, he studied Somali customary law.
A keen analyst of the intricacies of clan politics, he traveled fearlessly in war-torn Somalia. He died in Nimes, France, on June 5th, 2002
ISBN:9781569022504
Author:Michael van Notten and Spencer Heath MacCallum
