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Brief Summary WASHING THE NEGRO WHITE: The Evolution of Thinking on African Economic Development. "Washing the Negro White" addresses the idea-historical recapitulation of the negative image of the African, which in the western concept of progress since the 17th century has been the focal point of his redemptive reconstruction. The crucial epistemological phases of such reconstruction are the concept of the Great Chain of Being, by which the enslavement of Africans was theologically justified, the theory of social evolution, which provided the intellectual justification for the western racist and colonial domination of African people, and the current and post-colonial concepts of social modernization to strip Africans of their cultural identity and render them to exploitation in the global economic and financial system. The phases harbor not only the evolution of the so-called African development crisis, but also that of the developmental sciences, which, once before a handmaiden to colonial exploitation in Africa and without paradigm self-emancipation from their past origin, purport today to be keenly interested in African development. The transfer of the colonial concept of reality into the modern time is contained in the theory of social evolution, which in the post-colonial era still continues to provide the intellectual perspective of modern African development. The African crisis therefore sums up to the failure of the concept of reality of the developmental sciences, which, in the modern time continue to draw on the colonial paradigm in redressing the problems of African development deriving from colonialism. In the colonial period African development was equated to colonial development. The transfer of a colonial concept of reality into the post-colonial era, through the social evolutionary continuum of cultural tradition and cultural modernity, must accentuate the problems of African development that have their origin in colonialism. In the concept of social modernization, African development is viewed as before to be how to dismantle the socio-cultural phenomena on the continent, to be replaced by a pale copy from the former colonial masters. The disastrous consequence of post-colonial modernization is that the strategies evolve around a formula according to which developed is that which is modern and modern is that which is imported. This formula encapsulates the African crisis in all its dimensions. With the African developmental landscape reduced to an experimental field for alien ideas and concepts, development bypass the cultural reality of the continent and reduce the majority of the African population to become passive onlookers in the process. A development adapted to African cultural traditions and way of life has therefore been aborted and the colonial psychological complex of inferiority-superiority has been substituted for and intensified by the new concept of cultural tradition-modernity. The economic, social and political ramifications sum up to the African crisis, which is not likely to be minimized owing to the exogenously dominated framework of African development. The salutary message for the African continent is obvious. Over the long period of its intrusion into the continent, the western concept of progress has victimized Africans and rendered them vulnerable in a hostile global system. Unless Africans redefined and filled the content of their development with adequate consideration for the cultural reality on the continent, the so-called African crisis will persist and intensify to threaten the very existence and survival of Africans. ISBN:9781592212835 Author:Kwaku Adu Opako

Brief Summary South Sudan: The State We Aspire To was conceived and written mid-2009, two years to the conduct of the referendum on self-determination. The comprehensive peace agreement provided the people of Southern Sudan’ this inalienable right after nearly five decades of conflict. Peter Adwok Nyaba incisively discusses the high expectations and hopes the people of southern Sudan had, mixed with anxiety that characterises the fluid and unpredictable nature of the interim period leading to independence of South Sudan in 2011, and hence the title. In this second edition of South Sudan: The State We Aspire To, written after the eruption of violence in December 2013, the events vindicated what the author correctly discussed the situation southern Sudan was in as being ‘on the horns of a great dilemma’ or the attitude of its leaders being ‘between treason and stupidity.’ It was inevitable that the internal crisis in The Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM)/Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) leadership and failure to pursue socioeconomic development commensurate with its liberation ideology would plunge the country into hell on earth. Nyaba’s prime objective in The State We Aspire To, is to provoke a debate, inside and outside the SPLM and South Sudan at large, on the political future of South Sudan. He argues that the SPLM top leadership, cadres and general membership are collectively responsible for what is happening to this young nation having willfully abandoned the ideals for which the South Sudanese people sacrificed in the wars of national liberation. "I have criticized the SPLM leadership for its dismal performance in GOSS over the last six years, and I really mean it. There is no justification whatsoever for this performance except that SLPM suffered from a congenital ailment which afflicted its leaders.” (Peter Adwok Nyaba) "

Brief Summary Mukoma Wa Ngugi’s novel We, The Scarred, formerly known as Mrs Shaw, has today been revealed by its publisher Paivapo Publishers. Author, poet and academic Mukoma Wa Ngugi came into the African literary scene with the two novels Nairobi Heat and its sequel Killing Sahara (Black Star Nairobi). The two are crime fiction offerings featuring an African American police Detective Ishmael Fofona and Kenyan law enforcement badass David Odhiambo. You can read our reviews of Nairobi Heat and Killing Sahara (Black Star Nairobi). The writer has written many other things including the poetry collection Logotherapy (2016) and the nonfiction The Rise of African Novel (2018). In 2015, the author unleashed the Ohio University Press published novel Mrs Shaw about the fictional East African Kwatee Republic of the 1990s, its dictatorship about to fall, and its exiles preparing to return. We here at JamesMurua.com loved it and reviewed it for the Daily Nation here. The African rights for this book have been acquired by Paivapo Publishers who have opted to give the book the name We, The Scarred which really makes sense. Anyone who reads the novel will know that Mrs Shaw was not the central character in the title so it was really strange that this was its name. The new cover of the title, designed by Shubnum Khan with graphics by Megan Ross, has been unveiled today and you can see it in its glory below. ISBN:9780639946146 Author:Mukoma Wa Ngugi