Women burst onto the political scene in Africa after the 1990s, claiming more than one third of the parliamentary seats in countries like Angola,... Mozambique, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, and Burundi. Women in Rwanda hold the highest percentage of legislative seats in the world. Women's movements lobbied for constitutional reforms and new legislation to expand women's rights. This book examines the convergence of factors behind these dramatic developments, including the emergence of autonomous women's movements, changes in international and regional norms regarding women's rights and representation, the availability of new resources to advance women's status, and the end of civil conflict. The book focuses on the cases of Cameroon, Uganda, and Mozambique, situating these countries in the broader African context. The authors provide a fascinating analysis of the way in which women are transforming the political landscape in Africa, by bringing to bear their unique perspectives as scholars who have also been parliamentarians, transnational activists, and leaders in these movements.

African Women Writing Resistance is the first transnational anthology to focus on women’s strategies of resistance to the challenges they face in... Africa today.  The anthology brings together personal narratives, testimony, interviews, short stories, poetry, performance scripts, folktales, and lyrics. Thematically organized, it presents women’s writing on such issues as intertribal and interethnic conflicts, the degradation of the environment, polygamy, domestic abuse, the controversial traditional practice of female genital cutting, Sharia law, intergenerational tensions, and emigration and exile.    Contributors include internationally recognized authors and activists such as Wangari Maathai and Nawal El Saadawi, as well as a host of vibrant new voices from all over the African continent and from the African diaspora. Interdisciplinary in scope, this collection provides an excellent introduction to contemporary African women’s literature and highlights social issues that are particular to Africa but are also of worldwide concern.  It is an essential reference for students of African studies, world literature, anthropology, cultural studies, postcolonial studies, and women’s studies.  A Choice Outstanding Academic BookBest Books for Special Interests, selected by the American Association of School LibrariesBest Books for High Schools, selected by the American Association of School LibrariesBest Books for Professional Use, selected by the American Association of School Libraries

This path-breaking history of the African working class in Lourenco Marques proceeds from the assumption that Mozambican labor history was less about... skills, wages, or productivity than it was about racism, human dignity, and contested masculinity. African attempts to improve their lives through hard work were frustrated time and again by white employers determined to keep them in their place. Brutal forced-labor policies made it difficult for rural Africans to survive despite their continued access to agricultural land and family labor. Thus the majority of African men living in southern Mozambique spent their adult lives in wage labor, whether they worked in the South African mines or took low-paying jobs in and around the port city of Lourenco Marques. This lively and balanced analysis brings the voices of African workers to the foreground. By detailing the individual experiences of gang laborers, stevedores, domestic servants, and petty clerks, the author focuses our attention on the human dimensions of colonial racism.

Those who do not know their opponent's arguments do not completely understand their own. This book is one volume of the highly acclaimed Opposing... Viewpoints Series developed by Greenhave Press. "Each volume in the Opposing Viewpoints Series could serve as a model...not only providing access to a wide diversity of opinions, but also simulating readers to do further research for group discussion and individual interest. Both shrill and moderate, the selections-by experts, policy makers, and concerned citizens-include complete articles and speeches, long book excerpts, and occasional cartoons and boxed quotations...all up to date and fully documented. The editing is intelligent and unobtrusive, organizing the material around substantive issues within the general debate. Brief introductions to each section and to each reading focus the questions raised and offer no slick answers."

The Atlantic slave trade was one of the greatest intercontinental migrations in world history. Today, about one-third of all people of African descent... live outside Africa. Yet the historical record of the slaved trade remains curiously uneven. Africa Remembered tells much about some of the African societies from which thousands of slaves were imported to the Americas, and from which millions of Afro-Americans are descended. The documents collected here--ten rare, personal recollections--all mirror the West African slave trade from the non-European viewpoint. Each narrative relates vivid, exciting, and sometimes shocking personal experiences. They provide readers with an unusually candid insight into the history of the black people--and their European contemporaries--during this crucial period. Titles of related interest from Waveland Press: Bohannan-Curtin, Africa and Africans, Fourth Edition (ISBN 9780881338409); July, A History of the African People, Fifth Edition (ISBN 9780881339802); and Middleton, African Merchants of the Indian Ocean: Swahili of the East African Coast (ISBN 9781577663140).

Profit from the World’s Largest Untapped Market: Africa’s MORE THAN 900 MILLION Consumers!   “This book lays out a powerful portrait of the... growing opportunities in Africa. It is clear to us that any global firm interested in growth must see Africa as an essential part of its portfolio.” --E. Neville Isdell, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, The Coca-Cola Company, USA   “While we consider Africa one of our most important markets, we are very aware that it is often overlooked as a place to conduct sustainable business. This book shows that Africa offers opportunities equal to other developing regions that receive more attention. Through the Diageo Africa Business Reporting Awards, we have committed to promoting high-quality coverage of the business environment in Africa. This book makes an important contribution in providing a vivid picture of the African market opportunity.” --Paul Walsh, Chief Executive Officer, Diageo, UK   “This book presents a compelling argument for waking up to the potential of a continent with a population of over 900 million and a high rate of growth. The African continent is rich in natural resources and presents opportunities across a wide cross-section of industrial and commercial areas for companies with appropriate business strategies and a genuine commitment to improving the quality of life of the local population.” --Ratan N. Tata, Chairman, Tata Group, India   “Unilever has invested in Africa for over a century and is committed to building strong market positions in the region by meeting the needs of African consumers. As this book highlights, the opportunities for consumer goods companies are considerable and the potential to do business in Africa is much greater than many companies realize.”       --Patrick Cescau, Global CEO, Unilever, UK   “Bravo. The timing of this book is perfect. It will be much quoted. I especially like how Professor Mahajan uses the voices of Africans to bring it to life, alongside the research.” --Barbara James, former Managing Director of the African Venture Capital Association and founder of the Henshaw Funds, the first independent pan-African private equity Fund of Funds, Nigeria/UK   With more than 900 million consumers, the continent of Africa is one of the world’s fastest growing markets. In Africa Rising, renowned global business consultant Vijay Mahajan reveals this remarkable marketplace as a continent with massive needs and surprising buying power.   Crossing thousands of miles across the continent, he shares the lessons that Africa’s businesses have learned about succeeding on the continent...shows how global companies are succeeding despite Africa’s unique political, economic, and resource challenges...introduces local entrepreneurs and foreign investors who are building a remarkable spectrum of profitable and sustainable business opportunities even in the most challenging locations...reveals how India and China are staking out huge positions throughout Africa...and shows the power of the diaspora in driving investment and development.   Recognize that Africa is richer than you thinkAfrica is richer than India on the basis of gross national income (GNI) per capita, and a dozen African countries have a higher GNI per capita than China. Aim for Africa TwoOpportunities exist in all parts of the market, particularly the 400 million people in the middle of the market. Find opportunities to organize the marketFrom retailing to cell phones to banking, companies are succeeding by building infrastructure. Develop strategies for the most youthful market in the worldCompanies are recognizing opportunities from diapers to music to medicine in a market growing younger every day. Understand that Africa is not a “media dark” continentFrom Nollywood to satellite to broadband, media is exploding on the continent. Recognize the hidden strength of the African diaspora The African diaspora brings resources and knowledge to African development and expands the African opportunity beyond the continent. Build Ubuntu marketsCreate profitable businesses, sustainable growth, and social organizations by meeting basic human needs.  

Africa has been noticeably absent in international relations theory. This new collection of essays by contemporary Africanists convincingly demonstrates... the importance of the continent to every theoretical approach in international relations. The book breaks new ground in how we think about both international relations and Africa, re-examining such foundational concepts as sovereignty, the state, and power; critically investigating the salience of realism, neo-liberalism, liberalism in Africa, and providing new thinking about regionalism, security, and identity.

For thirty years, the World Bank has proposed policies that have produced few economic benefits but have eroded the traditional strengths of African... society—even the Bank itself now admits this. But while African leaders, many propped up by the West, are often corrupt or incompetent, an impressive range of regional initiatives and small-scale cooperatives, fledgling industrial projects, women’s organizations, and peasant associations represent major signs of hope. These countless initiatives, now springing from the grass roots of African life, embody the realities of an African road to development. They speak for good sense and great courage against the failed miseries of today: against World Bank dogmas left over from the Thatcher/Reagan era, against pricing abuses, against uncanceled debts owed to the rich by the world’s poorest countries—all of which have led to economic breakdown and war. They also challenge our failure to open up our markets to African exports and our minds to African expertise. Examined here in a manner that is both penetrating and hardheaded, what Africans themselves are saying and doing indicates the basis for a continent’s self-transformation and an agenda for the kind of support they are seeking.

Orthodox strategies for socio-economic development have failed spectacularly in Southern Africa.  Neither the developmental state nor neoliberal reform... seems able to provide a solution to Africa's problems.   In Africa's Development Impasse, Stefan Andreasson analyses this failure and explores post-development alternatives.  Looking at the post-independence histories of Botswana, Zimbabwe and South Africa, the book shows three different examples of this failure to overcome the debilitating colonial legacy.  Andreasson then argues that it is now time to resuscitate post-development theory's challenge to conventional development.  In doing this, he claims, we face the enormous challenge of translating post-development into actual politics for a sustainable future and using it as a dialogue about what the aims and aspirations of post-colonial societies might become.   This important fusion of theory with new empirical research will be essential reading for students of development politics and Africa. 

Brilliantly written and thoroughly engaging, the new edition of this groundbreaking book examines the full range of African-European encounters from an... unfamiliar African perspective rather than from the customary European one. Updated to include new research, maps, and illustrations, Africa's Discovery of Europe, 1450-1850, Second Edition, concludes with an expanded epilogue that extends the themes of African-European commercial and cultural interaction to the present day. By featuring vivid life stories of individual Africans and drawing upon their many recorded sentiments, David Northrup presents African perspectives that persuasively challenge stereotypes about African-European relations as they unfolded in Africa, Europe, and the Atlantic world between 1450 and 1850. Acclaimed by students in classroom settings ranging from secondary schools to graduate colloquia, the text features thematically organized chapters that explore first impressions, religion and politics, commerce and culture, imported goods and technology, the Middle Passage, and Africans in Europe. In addition, Northrup offers a thoughtful examination of Africans' relations--intellectual, commercial, cultural, and sexual--with Europeans, tracing how the patterns of behavior that emerged from these encounters shaped pre-colonial Africa. The book concludes with an examination of the roles of race, class, and culture in early modern times, pointing out which themes in Africa's continuing discovery of Europe after 1850 were similar to earlier patterns, and why other themes were different. Brief, inexpensive, and accessible, the second edition of Africa's Discovery of Europe offers an insightful look at the tumultuous and enduring relations between these two continents.

The TAZARA (Tanzania Zambia Railway Authority), or Freedom Railway, from Dar es Salaam on the Tanzanian coast to the Copperbelt region of Zambia was... instrumental in fostering one of the most sweeping development transitions in post-colonial Africa. Built during the height of the Cold War, the railway was intended to redirect the mineral wealth of the interior away from routes through South Africa and Rhodesia. Rebuffed by Western aid agencies, newly independent Tanzania and Zambia accepted help from China to construct what would become one of Africa's most vital transportation corridors. The book follows the railroad from design and construction to its daily use as a vital means for moving villagers and goods. It tells a story of how transnational interests contributed to environmental change, population movements, and the rise of local and regional enterprise.

This book, the Fifth Revised Edition of a well-known introductory textbook, has remained in steady demand for the past forty years. The new edition... covers events up to the middle of 2003, and takes account of the fresh perspectives brought about by the end of the Cold War and the new global situation following the events of September 11, 2001. It is also concerned with the demographic trends which are at the heart of so many African problems today, the ravages of diseases such as AIDS and malaria, and the conflicts waged by warlords fighting for control of scarce resources. Previous Edition Hb (1994): 0-521-41946-8 Previous Edition Pb (1994): 0-521-42970-6

Frederick Cooper's latest book on the history of decolonization and independence in Africa helps students understand the historical process from which... Africa's current position in the world has emerged. Bridging the divide between colonial and post-colonial history, it shows what political independence did and did not signify and how men and women, peasants and workers, religious leaders and local leaders sought to refashion the way they lived, worked, and interacted with each other.

Activist, scholar, and political journalist Colin Legum assesses Africa's experience since independence and offers judicious predictions about the... continent's future. Covering 50 years of sweeping change, this provocative and insightful book examines Africa's struggle for democracy, mounting economic problems, and AIDS.