Africa's Past, Our Future

Africa's Past, Our Future
Title Africa's Past, Our Future PDF eBook
Author Kathleen R. Smythe
Publisher Indiana University Press
Pages 244
Release 2015-07-06
Genre History
ISBN 0253016614

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“An impressive synthesis of current literature in African history, making it understandable and relevant.” —Jan Bender Shetler, author of Imagining Serengeti: A History of Landscape Memory in Tanzania from Earliest Times to the Present Africa’s Past, Our Future engages the history of the African continent through the perspective of global issues such as political instability, economic development, and climate change. Since the past may offer alternative models for thinking about our collective future, this book promotes an appreciation for African social, economic, and political systems that have endured over the long-term and that offer different ways of thinking about a sustainable future. Introducing readers to the wide variety of sources from which African history is constructed, the book’s ten chapters cover human evolution, the domestication of plants and animals, climate change, social organization, the slave trade and colonization, development, and contemporary economics and politics. “Smythe not only provides an excellent survey of the latest research on Africa’s past, she also presents a concise and clear argument as to why this history is relevant today.” ?African Studies Review “Recommended.” ?Choice “Grapples with the narratives and facts and where they fit in global perspective, but why this is all salient and critically meaningful to our lives today in terms of lessons we can learn and ideas we can borrow. This is a unique approach not yet available on the market.” ?Catherine Cymone Fourshey, Susquehanna University

Our Continent, Our Future

Our Continent, Our Future
Title Our Continent, Our Future PDF eBook
Author P. Thandika Mkandawire
Publisher IDRC
Pages 192
Release 2014-05-14
Genre Political Science
ISBN 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.

Foreign Aid and the Future of Africa

Foreign Aid and the Future of Africa
Title Foreign Aid and the Future of Africa PDF eBook
Author Kenneth Kalu
Publisher Springer
Pages 246
Release 2018-05-22
Genre History
ISBN 3319789872

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During the past five decades, sub-Saharan Africa has received more foreign aid than has any other region of the world, and yet poverty remains endemic throughout the region. As Kenneth Kalu argues, this does not mean that foreign aid has failed; rather, it means that foreign aid in its current form does not have the capacity to procure development or eradicate poverty. This is because since colonialism, the average African state has remained an instrument of exploitation, and economic and political institutions continue to block a majority of citizens from meaningful participation in the economy. Drawing upon case studies of Angola, Cameroon, Chad, Equatorial Guinea, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Nigeria, this book makes the case for redesigning development assistance in order to strike at the root of poverty and transform the African state and its institutions into agents of development.

The Future of Africa

The Future of Africa
Title The Future of Africa PDF eBook
Author Jakkie Cilliers
Publisher Springer Nature
Pages 429
Release 2021-04-06
Genre Political Science
ISBN 303046590X

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This open access textbook offers a critical introduction to human and economic development prospects in Africa revolving around three questions: where is Africa today, what explains the current state, and, given historical trends and what we know about the world, where do we think the continent will be in 2040? And, a final question: what can we do to create a better tomorrow? It models ambitious progress in health, demographics, agriculture, education, industrialization, technological leapfrogging, increased trade, greater stability, better governance and external support. The book reviews the future of work/jobs, poverty and the impact of climate change. A combined Closing the Gap scenario presents a forecast of what could be possible by 2040. Each chapter suggests which policies might accelerate prospects for each sector. Written in an accessible style, and supported by a range of pedagogical features, this textbook introduces undergraduate and graduate students to the contemporary human and economic development prospects in Africa.

African Literature and the Future

African Literature and the Future
Title African Literature and the Future PDF eBook
Author Adeoti, Gbemisola
Publisher CODESRIA
Pages 114
Release 2015-12-01
Genre Literary Criticism
ISBN 2869786336

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Many African countries achieved independence from their colonisers over five decades ago, but the people and the continent largely remain mere spectators in the arena of their own dance. The post-independence states are supposed to be sovereign, but the levers of economic and political powers still reside in the donor states. Not in many fora is the complex reality that defines Africa more trenchantly articulated than in imaginative literature produced about and on the continent. This is the crux of the essays collected in African Literature and the Future. The book reflects on Africa's past and present, addressing anxieties about the future through the epistemological lens of literature. The contributors peep ahead from a backward glance. They dissect the trend and tenor of politics and their impact on the socio-cultural and economic development of the continent as portrayed in imaginative writings over the years. One salient feature of African literature is the close affinity between art and politics in its polemics. This is well established in all the six essays in the book as the authors stress the interconnections between literature and society in their textual analyses. On the whole, there is an overwhelming feeling of angst and pessimism, but the authors perceive a glimmer of hope despite daunting odds, under different conditions. Thus, they depict the plausible fate of Africa in the twenty-first century, as informed by its ancient and recent past, gleaned from primary texts.

Africa Unchained

Africa Unchained
Title Africa Unchained PDF eBook
Author G. Ayittey
Publisher Springer
Pages 502
Release 2016-04-30
Genre Political Science
ISBN 1137122781

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In Africa Unchained , George Ayittey takes a controversial look at Africa's future and makes a number of daring suggestions. Looking at how Africa can modernize, build, and improve their indigenous institutions which have been castigated by African leaders as 'backward and primitive', Ayittey argues that Africa should build and expand upon these traditions of free markets and free trade. Asking why the poorest Africans haven't been able to prosper in the Twenty-first-century, Ayittey makes the answer obvious: their economic freedom was snatched from them. War and conflict replaced peace and the infrastructure crumbled. In a book that will be pondered over and argued about as much as his previous volumes, Ayittey looks at the possibilities for indigenous structures to revive a troubled continent.

Toward an African Future—Of the Limit of World

Toward an African Future—Of the Limit of World
Title Toward an African Future—Of the Limit of World PDF eBook
Author Nahum Dimitri Chandler
Publisher State University of New York Press
Pages 181
Release 2021-07-01
Genre Social Science
ISBN 1438484208

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Widely known for his probing analysis of W. E. B. Du Bois's early work, in this book Nahum Dimitri Chandler references writing from across the whole of Du Bois's long career, while bringing sharp focus on two later texts issued in the immediate aftermath of World War II—Color and Democracy: Colonies and Peace and The World and Africa: An Inquiry into the Part which Africa Has Played in World History. In these texts, "the problem of the color line," which Du Bois had already characterized as the problem not only of the twentieth century, but of the modern epoch as a whole, is further figured as a global problem, as a horizon linking the contemporary conjuncture of the history of modern systems of enslavement with the ongoing impact of modern colonialism and imperialism on the world's possible futures. On this line of thought, Chandler proposes that the name of "Africa" is a theoretical metaphor that enables a hyperbolic re-narrativization of modern historicity. Du Bois thus emerges as an exemplary thinker of history and hope for the world beyond the limit of the present.