60 years after independence, African nations still find it difficult to face a number of challenges, from establishing meaningful democratic institutions to establish social structures centered on the advancement of gender equality. This volume approaches these contemporary African challenges while combating a reflexive and facile Afro-Pessimism.

Ghana, the former British colony of the Gold Coast, is historically known for being the first country to the south of the Sahara to attain political independence from colonial rule. It is known for its exports of cocoa and a variety of minerals, especially gold, and it is now an oil exporting country. But Ghana's importance to the African continent is not only seen in its natural resources or its potential to expand its agricultural output. Rather the nation's political history of nationalism, the history of military engagement in politics, record of economic depression and the ability to rise from the ashes of political and economic decay is the most unique character of the country. This fourth edition of Historical Dictionary of Ghana covers its history through a chronology, an introductory essay, appendixes, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 900 hundred cross-referenced entries on important personalities, politics, economy, foreign relations, religion, and culture. This book is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about Ghana.

For the past sixty years, the Pentecostal and Charismatic movement has played a major role in Zambia. In this book, Naar Mfundisi-Holloway explains the history of this development and its impact on civic engagement. She opens a discussion on church-state relations and explains how the church presented a channel of hope in the wake of the HIV/AIDS pandemic, despite having a history that eschewed civic engagement. In fact, the pandemic propelled the church to work alongside the state in the fight against the disease. Using interviews and historical analysis, this book provides valuable insight into how Pentecostal and Charismatic churches have effectively engaged matters of civic concern in Zambia dating from colonial times.

This book answers two related questions concerning civil war peace agreements. First, it explains why some peace agreements get signed while others do not get signed, and second, why do some of those agreements that get signed not hold to ultimately bring an end to protracted civil wars. In spite of the fact that most mediated settlements of civil wars are not durable, it is still important that we understand why some civil war agreements reach initial steps towards settlement, without which full and durable end of conflict is not possible. To improve our understanding of the process through which civil war agreements are concluded and why some settlements hold while others do not, this study looks at empirical evidence from three mediated sets of peace agreements. The focus is first a series of fourteen agreements that finally ended the first civil war in Liberia in 1997; second, the 1993 Arusha peace accord that failed to prevent the escalation of conflict into genocide in Rwanda; and third, a series of three agreements that were signed but did not initially hold to end the conflict in Sierra Leone. An excellent and thorough study, this book will be a welcome reference for collections in African studies, international peace studies, and political science.

"Empire forestry"-the broadly shared forest management practice that emerged in the West in the nineteenth century-may have originated in Europe, but it would eventually reshape the landscapes of colonies around the world. Melding the approaches of environmental history and political ecology, Colonial Seeds in African Soil unravels the complex ways this dynamic played out in twentieth-century colonial Sierra Leone. While giving careful attention to topics such as forest reservation and exploitation, the volume moves beyond conservation practices and discourses, attending to the overlapping social, economic, and political contexts that have shaped approaches to forest management over time.

From putative 'success stories' such as Ghana and Rwanda to failed efforts in Zimbabwe and other countries, this volume brings together seven incisive case studies from diverse contexts including post-war Sierra Leone, Uganda, and the new nation of South Sudan to distil insights into the troubled progress of reform across the African continent.

Cross-disciplinary studies in cultural history require regions with unusually favorable conditions of preservation as well as relevance to the disciplines and cultures involved. The first cataract of the Nile offers precisely such a combination, and this work employs a diverse set of academic perspectives to present a diachronic picture of its cultural and geographic history over a period of more than 5,000 years.

This anthology reflects the complex processes in the production of historical knowledge and memory about Sierra Leone and its diaspora since the 1960s. The processes, while emblematic of experiences in other parts of Africa, contain their own distinctive features. The fragments of these memories are etched in the psyche, bodies, and practices of Africans in Africa and other global landscapes; and, on the other hand, are embedded in the various discourses and historical narratives about the continent and its peoples. Even though Africans have reframed these discourses and narratives to reclaim and re-center their own worldviews, agency, and experiences since independence they remained, until recently, heavily sedimented with Western colonialist and racialist ideas and frameworks. This anthology engages and interrogates the differing frameworks that have informed the different practices-professional as well as popular-of retelling the Sierra Leonean past. In a sense, therefore, it is concerned with the familiar outline of the story of the making and unmaking of an African "nation" and its constituent race, ethnic, class, and cultural fragments from colonialism to the present. Yet, Sierra Leone, the oldest and quintessential British colony and most Pan-African country in the continent, provides interesting twists to this familiar outline. The contributors to this volume, who consist of different generations of very accomplished and prominent scholars of Sierra Leone in Africa, the United States, and Europe, provide their own distinctive reflections on these twists based on their research interests which cover ethnicity, class, gender, identity formation, nation building, resistance, and social conflict. Their contributions engage various paradoxes and transformative moments in Sierra Leone and West African history. They also reflect the changing modes of historical practice and perspectives over the last fifty years of independence.

One of the outstanding mysteries of the twentieth century, and one with huge political resonance, is the death of Dag Hammarskjold and his UN team in a plane crash in central Africa in 1961. Just minutes after midnight, his aircraft plunged into thick forest in the British colony of Northern Rhodesia (Zambia), abruptly ending his mission to bring peace to the Congo. Across the world, many suspected sabotage, accusing the multi-nationals and the governments of Britain, Belgium, the USA and South Africa of involvement in the disaster. These suspicions have never gone away. British High Commissioner Lord Alport was waiting at the airport when the aircraft crashed nearby. He bizarrely insisted to the airport management that Hammarskjold had flown elsewhere - even though his aircraft was reported overhead. This postponed a search for so long that the wreckage of the plane was not found for fifteen hours. White mercenaries were at the airport that night too, including the South African pilot Jerry Puren, whose bombing of Congolese villages led, in his own words, to 'flaming huts . . . destruction and death'. These soldiers of fortune were backed by Sir Roy Welensky, Prime Minister of the Rhodesian Federation, who was ready to stop at nothing to maintain white rule and thought the United Nations was synonymous with the Nazis. The Rhodesian government conducted an official inquiry, which blamed pilot error. But as this book will show, it was a massive cover-up that suppressed and dismissed a mass of crucial evidence, especially that of African eyewitnesses. A subsequent UN inquiry was unable to rule out foul play - but had no access to the evidence to show how and why. Now, for the first time, this story can be told. Who Killed Hammarskjoeld? follows the author on her intriguing and often frightening journey of research to Zambia, South Africa, the USA, Sweden, Norway, Britain, France and Belgium, where she unearthed a mass of new and hitherto secret documentary and photographic evidence.

Seligmann focuses on the development of German policy towards the Transvaal and southern Africa in the 1890s. During this time Germany's flirtation with President Kruger and her confrontational approach to Britain threatened war. How did this come to pass? The author examines the roots of German policy and explores consequent rivalries and tensions. The conclusions show the importance of South Africa to German imperialism and the role it played in widening German imperial ambitions before the First World War.

Several civilizations have risen, flourished and fallen in the valley of the Nile, each with its own religion, language, culture, institutions and style of life. Yet beneath them all a certain basic unity persisted. In few fields can this continuity of social life be seen more clearly than in the love of tales and in the manner of telling them. One of the oldest stories known to humanity, that of Sinuhe, shows a subtlety, a self-consciousness and an artificiality that mark it as the product of a highly developed literary tradition. The Greek literature produced in Egypt includes the most famous of all stories, the ""Romance of Alexander,"" later translated and adapted into countless languages. The literature of the Copts is largely church literature. The Arab invasion at the beginning of the 7th century brought a new language, religion and culture to Egypt. Some of the tales in the Thousand and One Nights are also of Egyptian provenance. In the 20th century, the Egyptian novelist Naguib Mahfouz was the first Arab to receive a Nobel prize. The Egyptian has always loved a good story, and told it well. It is by the limitless wealth of imagination that Egyptian literature is chiefly distinguished, and it is thanks to this quality in its literature, religion and monuments that the country impressed Hebrew, Greek, Arab and Western European alike as a land of magic and wonder.

This book brings together internationally renowned academics from Europe and North America offering a uniquely comprehensive and timely analysis of the intervention in Libya in 2011. The military intervention in Libya in March 2011 generated heated debate internationally and reinvigorated interest in humanitarian intervention. The action was widely heralded as a surprisingly robust and effective response to a looming mass atrocity. This volume critically analyses the intervention and challenges the dominant positive narrative, especially the ostensibly causal role played by the 'Responsiblity to Protect' doctrine (R2P). The contributors assess the Libyan intervention in the context of a number of contemporary trends and ongoing debates and argue that the manner in which the intervention was sanctioned, prosecuted and justified has a number of troubling implications for both the future of humanitarian intervention and international peace and security. This edited collection includes contributions from Professor Alex de Waal (Tufts University, USA), Dr Eric Heinze (University of Oklahoma, USA), Professor Tom Keating (University of Alberta, Canada), Professor Alan Kuperman (University of Texas at Austin, USA), Professor Kim Richard Nossal (Queen's University, Canada), Dr Theresa Reinold (Social Science Research Centre Berlin, Germany) and Dr Brent Steele (University of Kansas, USA).

From My Heart is a chronological assessment of the contributing events between 2004 and 2009 that have helped define Nigeria and Africa. What leashes have kept Nigeria from fulfilling the expectations of her people? Can a country which spends more on public officials than it does on public education make rewarding economic progress? Was Dr. James D. Watson accurate in his assessment, which attracted the umbrage of Africans and non-Africans in 2007? Those questions and more have been addressed in an interactive and daring manner. From My Heart is a useful resource material for scholars who seek information not only about developments in Nigeria, which are responsible for its current social shape, but also about Africa and the entire black race. This book contains testimony by Nuhu Ribadu, former Nigerian anti-corruption Czar, given before the U.S. House Financial Services Committee. About the Author: Leonard Shilgba grew up in Nigeria, but lived, studied, and worked in Japan. He currently lives with his family in the university town of Yola, just outside Abuja, Nigeria's capital. He is a university professor at the American University of Nigeria, Yola. In addition, he is continuously working on strengthening the Nigeria Rally Movement, which he co-founded. Publisher's website: http://www.strategicpublishinggroup.com/title/FromMyHeart.html

A scholarly and engaging study, this history of Swaziland, by an author who spent many years in the kingdom, presents a vivid account of the interplay of politics and personalities along the passage to post-colonial independence. From the early stages of Swazi occupation of the present-day kingdom to the accession of Sobhuza II as king in 1921, this book traces problems in consolidating leadership under the Dlamini chieftaincy and examines the infuence of Boer and British settlers, and of mining and commercial interests, on Swazi culture and governance. It recounts the story of a thriving small nation that sought to maintain traditional customs and institutions in the face of a powerful European presence.

Each of the sixteen chapters concentrates on an aspect of political history that has influenced the character of the present-day kingdom, and much of the material, especially after 1900, has not been utilized in previous studies. The introduction looks at Swazi experience in a contemporary context, evaluating historic forces that have made for stability in a rapidly changing world. Other sections detail the Swazi reaction to European-controlled neighboring states (the Transvaal, Natal, and Mozambique), the tensions introduced by successive Boer and British policies, the Swazi detachment during two external wars (1899-1902 and 1914-1918), and widespread concerns about colonialism and self-governance following World War I.

The last great cavalry campaign of the 19th Century
This is a fascinating book written by a journalist present with the British Cavalry during the Boer War. He describes its manoeuvres, actions and battles in some detail and for those interested in the campaign this concise account will provide much welcome detail. What makes it especially interesting is that the author did not simply report on the British Cavalry-he was also a great advocate for it. He challenges the emergent view that the days of cavalry were drawing to their close and champions its cause over the newly created mounted infantry. Interestingly, French would lead the British army in the opening stages of the Great War in Europe. There all would shortly learn how the experiences of the South African War would translate to the 20th century battlefield.

In 1962, almost one million people were evacuated from Algeria. France called these citizens Repatriates to hide their French Algerian origins and to integrate them into society. This book is about Repatriation and how it became central to France's postcolonial understanding of decolonization, the Algerian past, and French identity.

An insightful account of the devastating impact of the Great War, upon the already fragile British colonial African state of Northern Rhodesia. Deploying extensive archival and rare evidence from surviving African veterans, it investigates African resistance at this time.

For decades the global gaze on South African society invariably focused on it as a symbol of the inevitable excesses of social engineering, racism and violence under the apartheid dispensation; with astonishment at the apparent exceptionalism of the 'miracle' transition that occurred to democratic rule and the dismantling of apartheid; and more recently, on the resurgence of newer manifestations of racialisation and violence in post-apartheid South Africa. Race, Memory and the Apartheid Archive: Towards a Transformative Psychosocial Praxis recognises and confronts this complex history of racialised oppression, as well as the future possibilities and impossibilities of transforming South African society through a re-engagement with the apartheid archive - an archive that holds the promise of not only revisiting and augmenting our history through the storied lives of ordinary citizens, but also allows us to understand the continued impact of this past on our present social, subjective and psychological realities. Located within a psychosocial approach that is uniquely suited to the socio-historical and psychical analysis of racism, this book relies mainly on the memories, stories and narratives of ordinary people, submitted to the Apartheid Archive Project, as its source material. It provokes us into thinking about racism as grounded as much in affective as in macro-political means, in the functioning of both intrapsychic and material forms, perpetuated as much in private as in institutional domains, and the ways in which these understandings can contribute to social transformation.

This book sheds light on the growing phenomenon of cyberactivism in the Arab world, with a special focus on the Egyptian political blogosphere and its role in paving the way to democratization and socio-political change in Egypt, which culminated in Egypt's historical popular revolution on Jan. 25, 2011. In doing so, it examines the relevance and applicability of the concepts of citizen journalism and civic engagement to the discourses and deliberations in five of the most popular political blogs in Egypt, through exploring the potential connection between virtual activism, as represented in the postings on these blogs, and real activism in Egyptian political life, as represented in the calls for social, economic and political reform on the streets.

In modern times, Ethiopia has suffered three grievous famines, two of which-in 1973-74 and in 1984-85-caught the world's attention. It is often assumed that population increase drove Ethiopia's farmers to overexploit their environment and thus undermine the future of their own livelihoods, part of a larger global process of deforestation. In Farming and Famine, Donald E. Crummey explores and refutes these claims based on his research in Wallo province, an epicenter of both famines. Crummey draws on photographs comparing identical landscapes in 1937 and 1997 as well as interviews with local farmers, among other sources. He reveals that forestation actually increased due to farmers' tree-planting initiatives. More broadly, he shows that, in the face of growing environmental stress, Ethiopian farmers have innovated and adapted. Yet the threat of famine remains because of constricted access to resources and erratic rainfall. To avoid future famines, Crummey suggests, Ethiopia's farmers must transform agricultural productivity, but they cannot achieve that on their own.

Based on innovative and extensive research, this edited volume examines the complex and unique human, cultural, and religious exchanges that resulted from the enslavement and the trade of Africans in the North and the South Atlantic regions during the era of the transatlantic slave trade. The book shows the connections between multiple Atlantic worlds that contain unique and diverse characteristics. The Atlantic slave trade disrupted African societies, families, and kin groups. Along the paths of the slave trade, men, women and children were imprisoned, separated, raped, and killed by war, famine and disease. The authors investigate some of the different pathways, whether physical and geographical or intellectual and metaphorical, that arose over the centuries in different parts of the Atlantic world in response to the slave trade and slavery. Highlighting unique and similar aspects, this groundbreaking book follows the trajectories of individuals, groups, and images, rethinking their relations with the local, and the Atlantic contexts.Although not neglecting statistic data, the volume focuses on the movement of groups and individuals as well as the cultural, artistic and religious transfers deriving from the Atlantic slave trade. Privileging multidirectional and transnational approaches, the authors investigate regions and groups usually underrepresented in Atlantic scholarship. The various chapters reassess the results of the transatlantic slave trade interactions that gave birth to mixed groups, cultures, and artistic forms on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. Some chapters examine the trajectories of North Americans who fought against slavery, as well as those historical actors who benefited from the trade by selling and buying enslaved people. Other chapters study the lives of enslaved Africans and people of African descent, in order to understand how these experiences are brought to the present and reinterpreted by the later generations through visual arts and film. As a number of contributors included in this volume argue, the exchanges that resulted from the movement of peoples, goods, ideas, mentalities, tastes, and images and their legacies did not stop with the end of the Atlantic slave trade and slavery, but remain the object of continuous transformation, adaptation, and reinvention.Challenging the prevailing Atlantic world scholarship that usually privileges economic exchanges and demographic data, the book illuminates the multiple experiences of African and African-descended male and female historical actors in the North and the South Atlantic spaces. The various paths of the slave trade explored in the different chapters of this book shed light on the trajectories and representations of African individuals and their descendants in the Atlantic basin and beyond. Although the victims are no longer alive to narrate their experiences, the various authors attempt, even when the sources are scarce, to retrace the slaving paths of the male and female victims, allowing us to figure out the development of multiple Atlantic individual and collective encounters and interactions. Eventually, some contributors show that these individuals and groups who were forced into different pathways, sometimes were able to negotiate, to make choices, and seal various sorts of alliances, facing the challenges imposed by the Atlantic slave trade brutal dynamics.This is an important book for collections in slavery studies, Atlantic history, history of the United States, Latin American and Caribbean history, African studies and African Diaspora.