The State of Africa
The State of Africa

Author: Martin Meredith

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2011-09-01

Total Pages: 1082

ISBN-13: 0857203894

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'Meredith has given a spectacularly clear view of the African political jungle' – Spectator 'This book is hard to beat... Elegantly written as well as unerringly accurate' – Financial Times The fortunes of Africa have changed dramatically since the independence era began in 1957. As Europe’s colonial powers withdrew, dozens of new states were born. Africa was a continent rich in mineral resources and its economic potential was immense. Yet, it soon struggled with corruption, violence and warfare, with few states managing to escape the downward spiral. So what went wrong? In this riveting and authoritative account, Martin Meredith examines the myriad problems that Africa has faced, focusing upon key personalities, events and themes of the independence era. He brings his compelling analysis into the modern day, exploring Africa’s enduring struggles for democracy and the rising influence of China. It is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the continent’s plight and its hopes for a brighter future.

West African Challenge to Empire
West African Challenge to Empire

Author: Mahir Şaul

Publisher: Ohio University Press

Published: 2022-11-08

Total Pages: 365

ISBN-13: 0821441183

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West African Challenge to Empire examines the anticolonial war in the Volta and Bani region in 1915–16. It was the largest challenge that the French ever faced in their West African colonial empire, and one of the largest armed oppositions to colonialism anywhere in Africa. How such a movement could be organized in the face of European technological superiority despite the fact that this region is generally described as having consisted of rival villages and descent groups is a puzzle. In this jointly written book the two authors provide a detailed political and military history of this event based on archival research and ethnographic fieldwork. Using cultural and sociological analysis, it probes the origins of the movement, its internal organization, its strategy, and the reasons for its initial success and why it spread. In 2001 the authors of West African Challenge to Empire were awarded the Amaury Talbot Prize for African Anthropology by the Royal Anthropological Institute.

Sory Sanlé
Sory Sanlé

Author: Matthew Witkovsky

Publisher:

Published: 2018

Total Pages: 181

ISBN-13: 9783958294004

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"Rich people, poor people, religious people, artists, musicians, everyone could become a hero at [Sanle's] Volta studio." --Florent Mazzoleni, The New York Times The studio photographs of Sory Sanlé and his participation in the vibrant music scene in Bobo-Dioulasso give us a picture of a cosmopolitan city shaping its independent identity in the 1960s through to the '80s, the heyday of West African independence movements. Vintage photographs, seven-inch record sleeves and studio accessories are all reproduced in the most extensive portrayal to date of photography and music as key popular art forms with local, national and international resonance. With the colorful full title of Volta Photo: Starring Sory Sanlé and the Good People of Bobo-Dioulasso in the Small but Musically Mighty African Country of Burkina Faso, this book also includes essays on photography and sound in Africa as well as a CD with hit songs by Volta Jazz, Echo del Africa Nacional and other star bands. Born in Burkina Faso in 1943, Sory Sanlé runs a portrait studio in Bobo-Dioulasso. He opened his business in 1960, the year that Upper Volta (now Burkina Faso) declared independence from France. For many years, Sanlé also organized music parties around the city; he served as the official photographer for Volta Jazz, a key popular music orchestra in the 1960s and '70s.

Thomas Sankara
Thomas Sankara

Author: Brian J. Peterson

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Published: 2021-03-02

Total Pages: 321

ISBN-13: 0253053781

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Thomas Sankara: A Revolutionary in Cold War Africa offers the first complete biography in English of the dynamic revolutionary leader from Burkina Faso, Thomas Sankara. Coming to power in 1983, Sankara set his sights on combating social injustice, poverty, and corruption in his country, fighting for women's rights, direct forms of democracy, economic sovereignty, and environmental justice. Drawing on government archival sources and over a hundred interviews with Sankara's family members, friends, and closest revolutionary colleagues, Brian J. Peterson details Sankara's political career and rise to power, as well as his assassination at age 37 in 1987, in a plot led by his close friend Blaise Compaoré. Thomas Sankara: A Revolutionary in Cold War Africa offers a unique, critical appraisal of Sankara and explores why he generated such enthusiasm and hope in Burkina Faso and beyond, why he was such a polarizing figure, how his rivals seized power from him, and why T-shirts sporting his image still appear on the streets today.

The Mountain School
The Mountain School

Author: Greg Alder

Publisher: Greg Alder

Published: 2013

Total Pages: 266

ISBN-13: 0988682206

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The Kingdom of Lesotho is a mountainous enclave in southern Africa, and like mountain zones throughout the world it is isolated, steeped in tradition, and home to few outsiders. The people, known as Basotho, are respected in the area as the only tribe never to be defeated by European colonizers. Greg Alder arrives in Tsoeneng in 2003 as the village's first foreign resident since 1966. Back then, the Canadian priest who had been living there was robbed and murdered in his quarters. Set up as a Peace Corps teacher at the village's secondary school, Alder finds himself incompetent in so many unexpected ways. How do you keep warm in this place where it snows but there is no electricity? How do you feed yourself where there are no grocery stores let alone restaurants? Tsoeneng is a world apart from his home in America, but Alder persists in adapting. He learns to grow food, he learns to speak the strange local language, and he makes enough friends such that he is eventually invited to participate in initiation rites. Yet even as he seems accepted into the Tsoeneng fold, he sees how much of an outsider he will always remain-and perhaps want to remain. The Mountain School is insightful and candid, at times accepting and at times rebellious. It is the ultimate tale of the transplant.

French Primitivism and the Ends of Empire, 1945-1975
French Primitivism and the Ends of Empire, 1945-1975

Author: Daniel J. Sherman

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2011-11-15

Total Pages: 307

ISBN-13: 0226752690

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For over a century, the idea of primitivism has motivated artistic modernism. Focusing on the three decades after World War II, known in France as “les trentes glorieuses” despite the loss of most of the country’s colonial empire, this probing and expansive book argues that primitivism played a key role in a French society marked by both economic growth and political turmoil. In a series of chapters that consider significant aspects of French culture—including the creation of new museums of French folklore and of African and Oceanic arts and the development of tourism against the backdrop of nuclear testing in French Polynesia—Daniel J. Sherman shows how primitivism, a collective fantasy born of the colonial encounter, proved adaptable to a postcolonial, inward-looking age of mass consumption. Following the likes of Claude Lévi-Strauss, Andrée Putman, and Jean Dubuffet through decorating magazines, museum galleries, and Tahiti’s pristine lagoons, this interdisciplinary study provides a new perspective on primitivism as a cultural phenomenon and offers fresh insights into the eccentric edges of contemporary French history.

Historical Dictionary of the Democratic Republic of the Congo
Historical Dictionary of the Democratic Republic of the Congo

Author: Emizet Francois Kisangani

Publisher: Scarecrow Press

Published: 2009-10-01

Total Pages: 718

ISBN-13: 0810863251

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The third edition of the Historical Dictionary of the Democratic Republic of the Congo looks back at the nearly 48 years of independence, over a century of colonial rule, and even earlier kingdoms and groups that shared the territory. This is done through a chronology, an introductory essay, a bibliography, and over 800 cross-referenced dictionary entries on civil wars, mutinies, notable people, places, events, and cultural practices.