The African Condition

The African Condition

Author: Ali A. Mazrui

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1980-04-30

Total Pages: 32

ISBN-13: 9780521232654

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The noted political scientist Ali Mazrui explores six fundamental paradoxes of Africa today, focusing on Africa's key geographical position in relation to issues of economic distribution and social justice.


Empire, Global Coloniality and African Subjectivity

Empire, Global Coloniality and African Subjectivity

Author: Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni

Publisher: Berghahn Books

Published: 2013-06-01

Total Pages: 278

ISBN-13: 085745952X

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Global imperial designs, which have been in place since conquest by western powers, did not suddenly evaporate after decolonization. Global coloniality as a leitmotif of the empire became the order of the day, with its invisible technologies of subjugation continuing to reproduce Africa’s subaltern position, a position characterized by perceived deficits ranging from a lack of civilization, a lack of writing and a lack of history to a lack of development, a lack of human rights and a lack of democracy. The author’s sharply critical perspective reveals how this epistemology of alterity has kept Africa ensnared within colonial matrices of power, serving to justify external interventions in African affairs, including the interference with liberation struggles and disregard for African positions. Evaluating the quality of African responses and available options, the author opens up a new horizon that includes cognitive justice and new humanism.


Power, Politics, and the African Condition

Power, Politics, and the African Condition

Author: Ali AlʼAmin Mazrui

Publisher: Africa World Press

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 498

ISBN-13: 9781592211616

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Power, Politics, and the African Condition is the third volume of The Collected Essays of Ali A. Mazrui, which will provide readers with a broad spectrum of Ali. A. Mazrui's scholarly writings. The third volume is centered on issues of power and politics at the nexus of Africa's domestic affairs and its international concepts about the disequilibrium of power in the international system and the problems that Africa has confronted globally because of it. Mazrui focuses the reader's attention on the impact that the colonial legacy and African tradition had on state formation, leadership, Africa's political economy, violence and conflict resolution while presenting some of his most interesting and even controversial ideas for building "Pax Africana." Spanning nearly forty years, Mazrui's essays are classic and contemporary statements on the diagnosis and treatment of what he called "The African Condition."


Africa Works

Africa Works

Author: Patrick Chabal

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Published: 1999

Total Pages: 196

ISBN-13: 9780852558140

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Are there social, political and cultural factors in Africa which aspire to the continuation of patrimony and conspire against economic development? In association with the International African Institute North America: Indiana U Press


Democracy and Development in Africa

Democracy and Development in Africa

Author: Claude Ake

Publisher: Brookings Institution Press

Published: 2001-09-19

Total Pages: 184

ISBN-13: 0815723482

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Despite three decades of preoccupation with development in Africa, the economies of most African nations are still stagnating or regressing. For most Africans, incomes are lower than they were two decades ago, health prospects are poorer, malnourishment is widespread, and infrastructures and social institutions are breaking down. An array of factors have been offered to explain the apparent failure of development in Africa, including the colonial legacy, social pluralism, corruption, poor planning and incompetent management, limited in-flow of foreign capital, and low levels of saving and investment. Alone or in combination, these factors are serious impediments to development, but Claude Ake contends that the problem is not that development has failed, but that it was never really on the agenda. He maintains that political conditions in Africa are the greatest impediment to development. In this book, Ake traces the evolution and failure of development policies, including the IMF stabilization programs that have dominated international efforts. He identifies the root causes of the problem in the authoritarian political structure of the African states derived from the previous colonial entities. Ake sketches the alternatives that are struggling to emerge from calamitous failure--economic development based on traditional agriculture, political development based on the decentralization of power, and reliance on indigenous communities that have been providing some measure of refuge from the coercive power of the central state. Ake's argument may become a new paradigm for development in Africa.


Curing Their Ills

Curing Their Ills

Author: Megan Vaughan

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2013-05-06

Total Pages: 359

ISBN-13: 0745668941

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Curing their Ills traces the history of encounters between European medicine and African societies in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Vaughan's detailed examination of medical discourse of the period reveals its shifting and fragmented nature, highlights its use in the creation of the colonial subject in Africa, and explores the conflict between its pretensions to scientific neutrality and its political and cultural motivations. The book includes chapters on the history of psychiatry in Africa, on the treatment of venereal diseases, on the memoirs of European 'Jungle Doctors', and on mission medicine. In exploring the representations of disease as well as medical practice, Curing their Ills makes a fascinating and original contribution to both medical history and the social history of Africa.


Epidemics and the Health of African Nations

Epidemics and the Health of African Nations

Author: MISTRA

Publisher: The Mapungubwe Institute for Strategic Reflection (MISTRA)

Published: 2019-07-25

Total Pages: 441

ISBN-13: 0639995594

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News footage of disease in Africa is a familiar sight. Yet these outbreaks are often presented out of context, with no reference to the conditions that have triggered them. MISTRA’s new book, Epidemics and the Health of African Nations, aims to redress that. Researchers and practitioners from within the continent explore why Africa is so vulnerable to disease, and show how this vulnerability is closely linked to political and economic factors. They demonstrate how these same factors determine the way epidemics are treated. Authors extract lessons from case studies in different parts of Africa; challenge conventional frameworks about disease to argue for a ‘syndemics’ approach that takes into account the interrelationship between disease and political and socio-economic contexts; explore challenges of Africa’s future. They argue that a well-functioning health system is at the core of a country’s capacity to counter an epidemic. This volume brings African experts together to probe possible solutions to the continent’s heavy burden of disease. The insights offered will be helpful in devising policy for the control of disease and the combatting of epidemics in Africa.


Disability in Africa

Disability in Africa

Author: Toyin Falola

Publisher: Boydell & Brewer

Published: 2021

Total Pages: 453

ISBN-13: 158046971X

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Exploring issues of disability culture, activism, and policy across the African continent, this volume argues for the recognition of African disability studies as an important and emerging interdisciplinary field.


The African Philosophy Reader

The African Philosophy Reader

Author: P.H. Coetzee

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2004-03-01

Total Pages: 1027

ISBN-13: 1135884188

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Divided into eight sections, each with introductory essays, the selections offer rich and detailed insights into a diverse multinational philosophical landscape. Revealed in this pathbreaking work is the way in which traditional philosophical issues related to ethics, metaphysics, and epistemology, for instance, take on specific forms in Africa's postcolonial struggles. Much of its moral, political, and social philosophy is concerned with the turbulent processes of embracing modern identities while protecting ancient cultures.


Our Continent, Our Future

Our Continent, Our Future

Author: P. Thandika Mkandawire

Publisher: IDRC

Published: 2014-05-14

Total Pages: 192

ISBN-13: 155250204X

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Our Continent, Our Future presents the emerging African perspective on this complex issue. The authors use as background their own extensive experience and a collection of 30 individual studies, 25 of which were from African economists, to summarize this African perspective and articulate a path for the future. They underscore the need to be sensitive to each country's unique history and current condition. They argue for a broader policy agenda and for a much more active role for the state within what is largely a market economy. Finally, they stress that Africa must, and can, compete in an increasingly globalized world and, perhaps most importantly, that Africans must assume the leading role in defining the continent's development agenda.