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Ethiopia: The Last Two Frontiers by J...
Brief Summary
Provides the gist of one scholar's knowledge of this country acquired over several decades. The author of numerous works on Ethiopia, Markakis presents here an overarching, concise historical profile of a momentous effort to integrate a multicultural empire into a modern nation state. The concept of nation state formation provides the analytical framework within which this process unfolds and the changes of direction it takes under different regimes, as well as a standard for assessing its progress and shortcomings at each stage. Over a century old, the process is still far from completion and its ultimate success is far from certain. In the author's view, there are two major obstacles that need to be overcome, two frontiers that need to be crossed to reach the desired goal.
The first is the monopoly of power inherited from the empire builders and zealously guarded ever since by a ruling class of Abyssinian origin. The descendants of the people subjugated by the empire builders remain excluded from power, a handicap that breeds political instability and violent conflict. The second frontier is the arid lowlands on the margins of the state, where the process of integration has not yet reached, and where resistance to it is greatest.
Until this frontier is crossed, the Ethiopian state will not have the secure borders that a mature nation state requires. John Markakis is a political historian who has devoted a professional lifetime to the study of Ethiopia and its neighbours in the Horn of Africa. He has published several books and many articles on this area.
Swahili for the Broken hearted by Pet...
Brief Summary
Question: What do you do when you're dumped by the Girl Next Door?
Answer: Throw yourself into another madcap adventure and travel from Cape Town to Cairo...
A week after breaking up with the GND (his travelling companion through Central America) Peter Moore heads off to Africa to lose himself for a while. In the grand tradition of 19th-century scoundrelas, explorers and romantics, Africa strikes him as the ideal place to find solitude and anonymity in the face of a personal crisis.
What follows is Peter's journey from one end of the Dark Continent to the other.
Travelling the fabled Cape Town to Cairo route by any means of transport he can blag (or if he must, pay) his way onto, it's an epic trek that sees our intrepid Antipodean experience everything from the southernmost city in Africa to the Pyramids, vast game parks and thundering falls, cosmopolitan cities and tiny villages as he journeys through the very heart of Africa. And travelling on his own, it's inevitable that Peter falls in with a motley cast of characters and has a myriad misadventures: including coming face to face with a wild Hyena with very bad breath, crossing the treacherous Sani Pass, the highest in Africa, narrowly escaping a riot by hiding in a coffin shop, saving oil-covered Penguins in South Africa, acting as an extra in a WW2 epic, not to mention dodging 20,000 single woman trying to catch the eye of the king of Swaziland during the annual Reed Dance. And then there was the time when he was kicked out of Robert Mugabe's birthday bash at gunpoint.
A Moonless, Starless Sky: Ordinary Wo...
Brief Summary
In A Moonless, Starless Sky Okeowo weaves together four narratives that form a powerful tapestry of modern Africa: a young couple, kidnap victims of Joseph Kony's LRA; a Mauritanian waging a lonely campaign against modern-day slavery; a women's basketball team flourishing amid war-torn Somalia; and a vigilante who takes up arms against the extremist group Boko Haram.
This debut book by one of America's most acclaimed young journalists illuminates the inner lives of ordinary people doing the extraordinary--lives that are too often hidden, underreported, or ignored by the rest of the world.
We Are All Birds of Uganda by Hafsa Z...
'You can't stop birds from flying, can you, Sameer? They go where they will...'
1960s UGANDA. Hasan struggles to keep his family business afloat following the sudden death of his wife. As he begins to put his shattered life back together piece by piece, a new regime seizes power, and a wave of rising prejudice threatens to sweep away everything he has built.
Present-day LONDON. Sameer, a young high-flying lawyer, senses an emptiness in what he thought was the life of his dreams. Called back to his family home by an unexpected tragedy, Sameer begins to find the missing pieces of himself not in his future plans, but in a heritage he never knew.
Moving between two continents over a troubled century, We Are All Birds of Uganda is an immensely resonant novel that explores racial tensions, generational divides and what it means to belong.
The Gilded Ones by Namina Forna
Sixteen-year-old Deka lives in fear and anticipation of the blood ceremony that will determine whether she will become a member of her village. Already different from everyone else because of her unnatural intuition, Deka prays for red blood so she can finally feel like she belongs.
But on the day of the ceremony, her blood runs gold, the color of impurity--and Deka knows she will face a consequence worse than death.
Then a mysterious woman comes to her with a choice: stay in the village and submit to her fate, or leave to fight for the emperor in an army of girls just like her. They are called alaki--near-immortals with rare gifts. And they are the only ones who can stop the empire's greatest threat.
Knowing the dangers that lie ahead yet yearning for acceptance, Deka decides to leave the only life she's ever known. But as she journeys to the capital to train for the biggest battle of her life, she will discover that the great walled city holds many surprises. Nothing and no one are quite what they seem to be--not even Deka herself.
Black Sunday by Tola Rotimi Abraham
Brief Summary
Following the fate of one family over the course of two decades in Nigeria, this debut novel tells the story of each sibling’s search for agency, love, and meaning in a society rife with hypocrisy but also endless life
“I like the idea of a god who knows what it’s like to be a twin. To have no memory of ever being alone.”
Twin sisters Bibike and Ariyike are enjoying a relatively comfortable life in Lagos in 1996. Then their mother loses her job due to political strife, and the family, facing poverty, becomes drawn into the New Church, an institution led by a charismatic pastor who is not shy about worshipping earthly wealth.
Soon Bibike and Ariyike’s father wagers the family home on a “sure bet” that evaporates like smoke. As their parents’ marriage collapses in the aftermath of this gamble, the twin sisters and their two younger siblings, Andrew and Peter, are thrust into the reluctant care of their traditional Yoruba grandmother. Inseparable while they had their parents to care for them, the twins’ paths diverge once the household shatters. Each girl is left to locate, guard, and hone her own fragile source of power.
Written with astonishing intimacy and wry attention to the fickleness of fate, Tola Rotimi Abraham’s Black Sunday takes us into the chaotic heart of family life, tracing a line from the euphoria of kinship to the devastation of estrangement. In the process, it joyfully tells a tale of grace and connection in the midst of daily oppression and the constant incursions of an unremitting patriarchy. This is a novel about two young women slowly finding, over twenty years, in a place rife with hypocrisy but also endless life and love, their own distinct methods of resistance and paths to independence.
Party Politics and Economic Reform in...
Brief Summary
In Party Politics and Economic Reform in Africa's Democracies, M. Anne Pitcher offers an engaging new theory to explain the different trajectories of private sector development across contemporary Africa.
Pitcher argues that the outcomes of economic reforms depend not only on the kinds of institutional arrangements adopted by states in order to create or expand their private sectors, but also on the nature of party system competition and the quality of democracy in particular countries.
To illustrate her claim, Pitcher draws on several original data sets covering twenty-seven countries in Africa, and detailed case studies of the privatization process in Zambia, Mozambique, and South Africa. This study underscores the importance of formal institutions and political context to the design and outcome of economic policies in developing countries.
Manifest Now by Idil Ahmed
Brief Summary
Manifest Now provides a step-by-step guide with tools, techniques, and proven strategies to raise your frequency and create the reality you want. This book is designed to guide you through the mental, physical, and spiritual aspects of manifesting and creating all that your heart desires. You'll learn how to start removing mental and emotional blocks so you can rediscover that manifesting is your natural birthright. You'll feel more confident, reconnected, and powerful as you turn every page. Everything in your life will begin to shift as you begin to realize that you are a conscious creator.
What's Inside?
The Inner Love Flow: A reminder of your deepest most innate connection to the Source that provides you unconditional love. The Inner Love Flow will help you remember that it all starts with you and that you are never alone. You are divinely guided and connected at all times. The flow of love is constantly pouring into you and this wisdom will free you from every needing to play any games to lower your frequency. You'll activate your divine love, which will raise your frequency to create a healthier relationship with yourself and others. You will feel so full of The Inner Love Flow, that all you'll want to do is give unconditional love without ever seeking or trying so hard to receive it back.
This section will also teach you how to heal your heart from any past pains, form a deeper connection with your partner and even manifest a new relationship. Once you love yourself, the universe begins to open up for you and starts to work in your favor. Manifest Now Technique: A speed manifestation technique that you'll apply on daily basis to get magnificent results. You'll set intentions, follow particular instructions, and stay focused. You'll start to manifest right away. Things will start to shift in your favor. You'll start to notice that you're happier, excited, and more connected with your inner self. This technique is meant to help you open your heart and mind so that you can elevate pass all the noise that's distracting you from your real potential. Once you use the Manifest Now Technique, you will realize how powerful you are and never again will you doubt what lies within you. Release It: 10 powerful techniques you can use on a daily basis to release any mental, physical, or emotional blocks that hinder your manifesting powers.
Think It: 35 powerful thoughts to keep you energized, focused, and excited to manifest.
Affirm It: 100 affirmations that will help you start speaking, feeling, and commanding greatness, abundance, happiness, and financial freedom into your life right now.
Magnetic Money Mindset: Tools that help you discover your purpose, tap into your creative genius, do what you love, and attract financial freedom along the way.
Begin your journey and watch magical things unfold in your life.
Maps by Nuruddin Farah
Brief Summary
This first novel in Nuruddin Farah's Blood in the Sun trilogy tells the story of Askar, a man coming of age in the turmoil of modern Africa. With his father a victim of the bloody Ethiopian civil war and his mother dying the day of his birth, Askar is taken in and raised by a woman named Misra amid the scandal, gossip, and ritual of a small African village. As an adolescent, Askar goes to live in Somalia's capital, where he strives to find himself just as Somalia struggles for national identity.
Rumba Rules The Politics of Dance Mus...
Brief Summary
Mobutu Sese Seko, who ruled Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo) from 1965 until 1997, was fond of saying “happy are those who sing and dance,” and his regime energetically promoted the notion of culture as a national resource. During this period Zairian popular dance music (often referred to as la rumba zaïroise) became a sort of musica franca in many parts of sub-Saharan Africa. But how did this privileged form of cultural expression, one primarily known for a sound of sweetness and joy, flourish under one of the continent’s most brutal authoritarian regimes? In Rumba Rules, the first ethnography of popular music in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Bob W. White examines not only the economic and political conditions that brought this powerful music industry to its knees, but also the ways that popular musicians sought to remain socially relevant in a time of increasing insecurity.
Drawing partly on his experiences as a member of a local dance band in the country’s capital city Kinshasa, White offers extraordinarily vivid accounts of the live music scene, including the relatively recent phenomenon of libanga, which involves shouting the names of wealthy or powerful people during performances in exchange for financial support or protection. With dynamic descriptions of how bands practiced, performed, and splintered, White highlights how the ways that power was sought and understood in Kinshasa’s popular music scene mirrored the charismatic authoritarianism of Mobutu’s rule.
In Rumba Rules, Congolese speak candidly about political leadership, social mobility, and what it meant to be a bon chef (good leader) in Mobutu’s Zaire.
Assata An Autobiography by Assata Shakur
On May 2, 1973, Black Panther Assata Shakur (aka JoAnne Chesimard) lay in a hospital, close to death, handcuffed to her bed, while local, state, and federal police attempted to question her about the shootout on the New Jersey Turnpike that had claimed the life of a white state trooper. Long a target of J. Edgar Hoover's campaign to defame, infiltrate, and criminalize Black nationalist organizations and their leaders, Shakur was incarcerated for four years prior to her conviction on flimsy evidence in 1977 as an accomplice to murder.
This intensely personal and political autobiography belies the fearsome image of JoAnne Chesimard long projected by the media and the state. With wit and candor, Assata Shakur recounts the experiences that led her to a life of activism and portrays the strengths, weaknesses, and eventual demise of Black and White revolutionary groups at the hand of government officials. The result is a signal contribution to the literature about growing up Black in America that has already taken its place alongside The Autobiography of Malcolm X and the works of Maya Angelou.
Two years after her conviction, Assata Shakur escaped from prison. She was given political asylum by Cuba, where she now resides.
Water Birds on the Lakeshore by Zukis...
The Afro Young Adult project was launched in September 2018, with the aim of producing more African literature for young adults. The call for applications resulted in 435 submissions from 28 countries.
The final stories were selected through workshops in a number of African cities, run by panels consisting of writers, literary activists and young adult readers from across the continent.
Seventeen stories, written in English, French and Swahili, have now been selected to be published in the anthology, which appears in three editions in the three languages.
The First Woman by Jennifer Nansubuga...
Brief Summary
Growing up in a small Ugandan village, Kirabo is surrounded by powerful women. Her grandmother, her aunts, her friends and cousins are all desperate for her to conform, but Kirabo is inquisitive, headstrong and determined. Up until now, she has been perfectly content with her life at the heart of this prosperous extended family, but as she enters her teenage years, she begins to feel the absence of the mother she has never known.
The First Woman follows Kirabo on her journey to becoming a young woman and finding her place in the world, as her country is transformed by the bloody dictatorship of Idi Amin.
Jennifer Makumbi has written a sweeping tale of longing and rebellion, at once epic and deeply personal, steeped in an intoxicating mix of ancient Ugandan folklore and modern feminism, that will linger in the memory long after the final page.
Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi
Brief Summary
Yaa Gyasi's stunning follow-up to her acclaimed national best seller Homegoing is a powerful, raw, intimate, deeply layered novel about a Ghanaian family in Alabama.
Gifty is a fifth-year candidate in neuroscience at Stanford School of Medicine studying reward-seeking behavior in mice and the neural circuits of depression and addiction. Her brother, Nana, was a gifted high school athlete who died of a heroin overdose after a knee injury left him hooked on OxyContin. Her suicidal mother is living in her bed. Gifty is determined to discover the scientific basis for the suffering she sees all around her.
But even as she turns to the hard sciences to unlock the mystery of her family's loss, she finds herself hungering for her childhood faith and grappling with the evangelical church in which she was raised, whose promise of salvation remains as tantalizing as it is elusive. Transcendent Kingdom is a deeply moving portrait of a family of Ghanain immigrants ravaged by depression and addiction and grief--a novel about faith, science, religion, love. Exquisitely written, emotionally searing, this is an exceptionally powerful follow-up to Gyasi's phenomenal debut.
The Secret Lives of Baba Segis Wives ...
African-born poet Lola Shoneyin makes her fiction debut with The Secret Lives of Babi Segi’s Wives, a perceptive, entertaining, and eye-opening novel of polygamy in modern-day Nigeria.
The struggles, rivalries, intricate family politics, and the interplay of personalities and relationships within the complex private world of a polygamous union come to life in The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives—Big Love and The 19th Wife set against a contemporary African background.
Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi
A novel of breathtaking sweep and emotional power that traces three hundred years in Ghana and along the way also becomes a truly great American novel. Extraordinary for its exquisite language, its implacable sorrow, its soaring beauty, and for its monumental portrait of the forces that shape families and nations, Homegoing heralds the arrival of a major new voice in contemporary fiction.
Two half-sisters, Effia and Esi, are born into different villages in eighteenth-century Ghana. Effia is married off to an Englishman and lives in comfort in the palatial rooms of Cape Coast Castle. Unbeknownst to Effia, her sister, Esi, is imprisoned beneath her in the castle's dungeons, sold with thousands of others into the Gold Coast's booming slave trade, and shipped off to America, where her children and grandchildren will be raised in slavery.
One thread of Homegoing follows Effia's descendants through centuries of warfare in Ghana, as the Fante and Asante nations wrestle with the slave trade and British colonization. The other thread follows Esi and her children into America.
From the plantations of the South to the Civil War and the Great Migration, from the coal mines of Pratt City, Alabama, to the jazz clubs and dope houses of twentieth-century Harlem, right up through the present day, Homegoing makes history visceral, and captures, with singular and stunning immediacy, how the memory of captivity came to be inscribed in the soul of a nation.
Generation after generation, Yaa Gyasi's magisterial first novel sets the fate of the individual against the obliterating movements of time, delivering unforgettable characters whose lives were shaped by historical forces beyond their control. Homegoing is a tremendous reading experience, not to be missed, by an astonishingly gifted young writer.
The Bribery Syndrome by Joe Khamisi
The Bribery Syndrome: How Multinational Corporations Collude with Dictators to Raid Africa's Natural Resources.
A shocking narration of how global multinationals make billions of dollars in profits by bribing corrupt African dictators and public officials to secure lucrative contracts in some of the most critical economic sectors in Africa. Dozens of foreign company executives have been jailed and/or fined heavily for violating the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and the UK Bribery Act.
The book focuses on 28 corrupt leaders in sub-Saharan Africa who cozy up with company executives of some of the largest corporations in the world. Both the officials and the global conglomerates make huge amounts of money using kickbacks, bribery, and corruption while millions of Africans languish in poverty. The Bribery Syndrome is a compelling read.
Making Futures by Sangu Delle
Making Futures: Young Entrepreneurs in a Dynamic Africa.
Making Futures brings together 18 young entrepreneurs from 14 countries doing incredible work across the continent. Their stories are both inspirational and aspirational; providing a template for readers who might be interested in embarking on their own entrepreneurial journey, and allowing others to see the incredible energy and work that is happening across the continent.
There’s the story of David Sengeh, who has worked on combatting malaria and lack of energy in Sierra Leone before turning to custom-made prosthetics, to Farida Bedwei, co-founder of the largest microfinance banking software platform in Ghana.
These are entrepreneurs who are helping to reconfigure the narrative about Africa by simply making things for the masses of their population. They represent what is possible and what can be scaled up in different African contexts, despite the dysfunctionality witnessed across the continent. With such diversity of stories, readers have access to potential business ideas, while learning a little about the history of that country and what it takes to build a business in an emerging economy.
These men and women have done it and are doing it!
This collection equips readers with intimate knowledge about the markets and growth across the region, and how young creative entrepreneurs are identifying problems as opportunities and seeding growth in a continent that has been long overlooked, but is poised for explosive growth and opportunity, enabled by technology.
Beyond Intelligence by Wale Akinyemi
Brief Summary
Beyond intelligence: the simple practice of staying relevant.
Irrelevance is a tsunami that sweeps away the rich and the poor. It sweeps away the educated and the uneducated. It sweeps away the leaders and the led.
This book shows you practical ways to insulate yourself against this wave that has no respect for persons.