This book examines the pre-colonial African indigenous knowledge and technology with reference to the Bukusu traditional industries. It focuses mainly on iron working, ceramic manufacture, basketry, leatherwork, woodwork, music instruments and related industries. The study analyzes methods and techniques of production, gender roles and acquisition of skills and specialization. It further discusses types, uses and distribution of industrial products. The book captures the impact of colonialism on the Bukusu traditional industries, and how they transformed and adjusted to adapt to the changing needs within the society. On the whole, the study has succeeded in documenting the Bukusu traditional industries; showing how the Babukusu harnessed the surrounding environment for survival. It has also contributed to knowledge about African technology, and in particular, it attempts to correct the notion which equates "the pre-colonial" with "pre-industrial." The study has in addition, attempted to restore technology to its proper and integrated place in the African economy through time. This book is recommended to scholars of cultural, social and economic History, and cultural Anthropology.

In A Tapestry of African Histories: With Longer Times and Wider Geopolitics, contributors demonstrate that African historians are neither comfortable nor content with studying continental or global geopolitical, social, and economic events across the superficial divide of time as if they were disparate or disconnected. Instead, the chapters within the volume reevaluate African history through a geopolitically transcendent lens that brings African countries into conversation with other pertinent histories both within and outside of the continent. The collection analyzes the pre- and post-colonial eras within African countries such as Kenya, Malawi, and Sudan, examining major historical figures and events, struggles for independence and stability, contemporary urban settlements, social and economic development, as well as constitutional, legal, and human rights issues that began in the colonial era and persist to this day.