Bridging the divide between colonial and post-colonial history, worked, peasants and workers, religious leaders and local leaders sought to refashion the way they lived, it allows readers to see just what political independence did and did not signify and how men and women, and interacted with each other.

This text will help students understand the historical process out of which Africa's position in the world has emerged. Frederick cooper's book on the history of decolonization and independence in Africa is part of the textbook series New Approaches to African History.

Weep Not, Child Penguin African Writers Series Book 3

With more than 1, 700 titles, penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. The nobel prize–nominated kenyan writer’s powerful first novelTwo brothers, stand on a garbage heap and look into their futures: Njoroge is to attend school, Njoroge and Kamau, while Kamau will train to be a carpenter.

. For the practical kamau, the choice is simple, but for Njoroge the scholar, the dream of progress through learning is a hard one to give up. The first east african novel published in english, Weep Not, Child is a moving book about the effects of the infamous Mau Mau uprising on the lives of ordinary men and women, and on one family in particular.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. But this is kenya, and the times are against them: In the forests, the Mau Mau is waging war against the white government, and the two brothers and their family need to decide where their loyalties lie.

Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

A Man of the People

When odili launches a vicious campaign against his former mentor for the same seat in an election, their mutual animosity drives the country to revolution. From the renowned author of the african trilogy, a political satire about an unnamed African country navigating a path between violence and corruption As Minister for Culture, former school teacher M.

Published, just days before nigeria's first attempted coup in 1966, prophetically, A Man of the People is an essential part of Achebe’s body of work. A. But in the eat-and-let-eat atmosphere, Odili's idealism soon collides with his lusts—and the two men's personal and political tauntings threaten to send their country into chaos.

When odili, visits his former instructor at the ministry, an idealistic young teacher, the division between them is vast. Nanga is a man of the people, as cynical as he is charming, and a roguish opportunist.

The Joys of Motherhood: A Novel

Unable to conceive in her first marriage, Nnu is banished to Lagos where she succeeds in becoming a mother. Emecheta “writes with subtlety, power, and abundant compassion” New York Times. Then, against the backdrop of world War II, Nnu must fiercely protect herself and her children when she is abandoned by her husband and her people.

A feminist literary classic by one of Africa’s greatest women writers, re-issued with a new introduction by Stéphane Robolin. First published in 1979, the joys of Motherhood is the story of Nnu Ego, a Nigerian woman struggling in a patriarchal society.

Oil, Democracy, and Development in Africa

With attention to the complex histories, and the goals of diverse groups in society, the interactions of key industry actors and policy makers, this contribution fills a gap in the literature on resource-abundant countries. The book demonstrates that even those leaders who are among the least accountable use oil revenues to improve their citizens' living standards, if only a little bit.

As a consequence, african oil producers are growing economically and their people are living under increasingly democratic polities. John R. Oil, democracy, and development in Africa presents an optimistic analysis of the continent's oil-producing states. Heilbrunn thus calls for a long-overdue reassessment of the impact of hydrocarbons on developing economies.

Heilbrunn presents a positive assessment of circumstances in contemporary African oil exporters.

Ethnic Politics and State Power in Africa: The Logic of the Coup-Civil War Trap

How rulers respond to this strategic trade-off is shown to be a function of their country's ethnic geography and the distribution of threat capabilities it produces. Moving between in-depth case studies of sudan and the democratic Republic of the Congo based on years of field work and statistical analyses of powersharing, coups and civil war across sub-Saharan Africa, the book serves as an exemplar of the benefits of mixed methods research for theory-building and testing in comparative politics.

Roessler models africa's weak, ethnically-divided states as confronting rulers with a coup-civil war trap - sharing power with ethnic rivals is necessary to underwrite societal peace and prevent civil war, but increases rivals' capabilities to seize sovereign power in a coup d'état. Why are some african countries trapped in vicious cycles of ethnic exclusion and civil war, while others experience relative peace? In this groundbreaking book, Philip Roessler addresses this question.

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Democracy in Africa: Successes, Failures, and the Struggle for Political Reform New Approaches to African History Book 9

This book provides the first comprehensive overview of the history of democracy in Africa and explains why the continent's democratic experiments have so often failed, as well as how they could succeed. Nic cheeseman grapples with some of the most important questions facing Africa and democracy today, including whether international actors should try and promote democracy abroad, how to design political systems that manage ethnic diversity, and why democratic governments often make bad policy decisions.

. Beginning in the colonial period with the introduction of multi-party elections and ending in 2013 with the collapse of democracy in Mali and South Sudan, the book describes the rise of authoritarian states in the 1970s; the attempts of trade unions and some religious groups to check the abuse of power in the 1980s; the remarkable return of multiparty politics in the 1990s; and finally, the tragic tendency for elections to exacerbate corruption and violence.

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A History of Modern Africa: 1800 to the Present Wiley Blackwell Concise History of the Modern World Book 8

Updated and revised to emphasise long-term perspectives on current issues facing the continent, the new 2nd Edition of A History of Modern Africa recounts the full breadth of Africa's political, economic, and social history over the past two centuries. Adopts a long-term approach to current issues, especially during the colonial encounter includes more in-depth coverage of non-Anglophone Africa Offers expanded coverage of the post-colonial era to take account of recent developments, Tunisia, stressing the importance of nineteenth-century and deeper indigenous dynamics in explaining Africa's later twentieth-century challenges Places a greater focus on African agency, including the conflict in Darfur and the political unrest of 2011 in Egypt, and Libya.

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Dictators and Democracy in African Development: The Political Economy of Good Governance in Nigeria African Studies Book 130

The author links the political structure of the policy process to patterns of government performance over half a century to show that the key factor is not simply the status of the regime as a dictatorship or a democracy, but rather it is the structure of the policy-making process by which different policy demands are included or excluded.

By identifying political actors with the leverage to prevent policy change and extract concessions, empirical tests demonstrate how these 'veto players' systematically affect the performance of two broad categories of public policy. What are the conditions for good governance in africa, colonialism, and why do many democracies still struggle with persistent poverty? Drawing on a historical study of Nigeria since independence, foreign debt, ethnic diversity, this book argues that the structure of the policy-making process explains variations in government performance better than other commonly cited factors, such as oil, and dictatorships.

This madisonian dilemma has important implications for African countries struggling with the institutional trade-offs presented by different regimes.

So Long a Letter

Ramatoulaye hopes for a world where the best of old customs and new freedom can be combined. Addressed to a lifelong friend, aissatou, it is a record of Ramatoulaye’s emotional struggle for survival after her husband betrayed their marriage by taking a second wife. The brief narrative, written as an extended letter, is a sequence of reminiscences —some wistful, some bitter—recounted by recently widowed Senegalese schoolteacher Ramatoulaye Fall.

Winner of the prestigious Noma Award for Publishing in Africa. Angered by the traditions that allow polygyny, they inhabit a social milieu dominated by attitudes and values that deny them status equal to men. This semi-autobiographical account is a perceptive testimony to the plight of educated and articulate Muslim women.

Considered a classic of contemporary african women’s literature, So Long a Letter is a must-read for anyone interested in African literature and the passage from colonialism to modernism in a Muslim country. Written by award-winning african novelist mariama bâ and translated from the original French, So Long a Letter has been recognized as one of Africa’s 100 Best Books of the 20th Century.

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No Longer at Ease African Trilogy, Book 2

A classic story of moral struggle in an age of turbulent social change and the final book in Chinua Achebe’s The African TrilogyWhen Obi Okonkwo, grandson of Okonkwo, the main character in Things Fall Apart returns to Nigeria from England in the 1950s, his foreign education separates him from his African roots.

No longer at ease, the third and concluding novel in Chinua Achebe’s The African Trilogy, depicts the uncertainties that beset the nation of Nigeria, as independence from colonial rule loomed near. He is part of a ruling Nigerian elite whose corruption he finds repugnant. His fate, overtakes him as he finds himself trapped between the expectation of his family, however, his village—both representations of the traditional world of his ancestors—and the colonial world.

A story of a man lost in cultural limbo, and a nation entering a new age of disillusionment, No Longer at Ease is a powerful metaphor for his generation of young Nigerians. In obi okonkwo’s experiences, pitfalls, the ambiguities, and temptations of a rapidly evolving society are revealed.