China, in the past five years, has developed a proactive global policy and is emerging as a new global power with particular focus on developing countries in Central Asia, Southeast Asia, Latin America and Africa. African countries constitute a new market for Chinese products. They also provide a source of raw materials. Will Africa be a pawn or a player in this emerging geopolitical game? will China's deepening relations with the continent represent a new opportunity for African countries to negotiate a new partnership and skillfully use it to the best advantage of their citizens? These are some of the questions contributors to this volume have tried to answer by examining various facets of these deepening relations and underlining areas of concerns as well as the opportunities for mutually rewarding relations.

Water is both an essential resource and a source of disease and conflict in contemporary Africa. And we begin to learn that far distant processes of consumption and pollution can have their impact on the water systems of Africa: global warming produced by the material culture of the first world threatens the weather systems and very survival of developing countries. In this context, this volume - the product of an expert meeting at Cornell University's Institute for African Development - traces and tracks the dynamics of the contemporary hydropolitics of Africa.The volume contains a variety of approaches to the study of the organisation of water within Africa ranging from technical essays on water borne diseases, through institutional analyses of the legal and political arrangements around the distribution of water to social policy analyses of the unmet demand for water amongst Africa's poor. Taken as a whole, the volume provides the reader with a useful reference work on the contemporary hydropolitics of Africa whilst simultaneously providing a lively introduction to a critical and much neglected area of African development policy.