Over fifty-five years of independence, African countries continue to suffer from the precolonial challenges and confusions. Notably, the African dream has been abandoned, and the pursuits of which have been kidnapped by a gang of destiny robbers hopping about as messiahs without direct appointment by the African people. These groups of opportunistic and materially possessed misguiders claiming to be leaders of Africa have defiled all odds and continue to enjoy the top cream at the expense of starving population. Yet the African people are squarely responsible for every misfortune they are suffering from. For so many years, Africans have been offered opportunities to elect leadership based on quality and the content of their brains, but a majority of them prefer to go for other qualities which are completely unjustifiable and misguided. A factor that has contributed to the mass breeding of ineffective and insensible cadre of misleaders the continent continues to suffer from. The African continent is featured as a wealthy continent with numerous natural resources. The irony remains that the resources from the bellies of Africa are not utilized for the benefit of the African people, despite benefiting many other continents outside Africa. Africans are implored in this book to wake up and reposition themselves in the rightful places before the world. The writer utilizes rare evidences within the African context to narrate the story of the unfortunate perpetual underdevelopment of the African continent, which for the rest of the time has been surviving at the mercies of generosity of other tax payers in most of her sustenance, but even so, management of the generously acquired support is lacking with several accounts of theft and looting of public resources reported every day in the continent. Life gets harder by the day and for many years, Africans have been moving away into other civilizations to seek “greener pastures” which seem not to be greener anymore. The rest of the world, just like Africa are beginning to feel the pinch of economic hardships and service provision to citizens is taken into focus. Meanwhile, the continued elopement scheme of the African masses into other continents is depriving her of her only vital resource it needs to jump start her journey to economic freedom and power. It is only through erection of effective and astute leadership that the Africa dreams will be secured and realized.

Desperate poverty is perhaps the greatest challenge facing Africa. Over the past 30 years, while the rest of the world has enjoyed unprecedented economic growth and prosperity, African countries have grown poorer. Today, more than 40 percent of the people living in sub-Saharan Africa subsist on less than $1 a day. This book explains the causes of Africas economic stagnation and discusses the many ways in which grinding poverty contributes to a reduced quality of life for Africans. The book also explores methods that current leaders and international organizations are using to help reduce poverty in Africa.

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY Bloomberg • Forbes • The Spectator Recipient of Foreign Policy's 2013 Albie Award A powerful portrayal of Jeffrey Sachs's ambitious quest to end global poverty "The poor you will always have with you," to cite the Gospel of Matthew 26:11. Jeffrey Sachs—celebrated economist, special advisor to the Secretary General of the United Nations, and author of the influential bestseller The End of Poverty—disagrees. In his view, poverty is a problem that can be solved. With single-minded determination he has attempted to put into practice his theories about ending extreme poverty, to prove that the world's most destitute people can be lifted onto "the ladder of development." In 2006, Sachs launched the Millennium Villages Project, a daring five-year experiment designed to test his theories in Africa. The first Millennium village was in Sauri, a remote cluster of farming communities in western Kenya. The initial results were encouraging. With his first taste of success, and backed by one hundred twenty million dollars from George Soros and other likeminded donors, Sachs rolled out a dozen model villages in ten sub-Saharan countries. Once his approach was validated it would be scaled up across the entire continent. At least that was the idea. For the past six years, Nina Munk has reported deeply on the Millennium Villages Project, accompanying Sachs on his official trips to Africa and listening in on conversations with heads-of-state, humanitarian organizations, rival economists, and development experts. She has immersed herself in the lives of people in two Millennium villages: Ruhiira, in southwest Uganda, and Dertu, in the arid borderland between Kenya and Somalia. Accepting the hospitality of camel herders and small-hold farmers, and witnessing their struggle to survive, Munk came to understand the real-life issues that challenge Sachs's formula for ending global poverty. THE IDEALIST is the profound and moving story of what happens when the abstract theories of a brilliant, driven man meet the reality of human life.

In this groundbreaking work, the Nobel Peace Prize-winner and founder of the Green Belt Movement offers a new perspective on the troubles facing Africa today. Too often these challenges are portrayed by the media in extreme terms connoting poverty, dependence, and desperation. Wangari Maathai, the author of Unbowed, sees things differently, and here she argues for a moral revolution among Africans themselves. Illuminating the complex and dynamic nature of the continent, Maathai offers “hardheaded hope” and “realistic options” for change and improvement. She deftly describes what Africans can and need to do for themselves, stressing all the while responsibility and accountability. Impassioned and empathetic, The Challenge for Africa is a book of immense importance.

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.

Invisible Agents shows how personal and deeply felt spiritual beliefs can inspire social movements and influence historical change. Conventional historiography concentrates on the secular, materialist, or moral sources of political agency. Instead, David M. Gordon argues, when people perceive spirits as exerting power in the visible world, these beliefs form the basis for individual and collective actions. Focusing on the history of the south-central African country of Zambia during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, his analysis invites reflection on political and religious realms of action in other parts of the world, and complicates the post-Enlightenment divide of sacred and profane. The book combines theoretical insights with attention to local detail and remarkable historical sweep, from oral narratives communicated across slave-trading routes during the nineteenth century, through the violent conflicts inspired by Christian and nationalist prophets during colonial times, and ending with the spirits of Pentecostal rebirth during the neoliberal order of the late twentieth century. To gain access to the details of historical change and personal spiritual beliefs across this long historical period, Gordon employs all the tools of the African historian. His own interviews and extensive fieldwork experience in Zambia provide texture and understanding to the narrative. He also critically interprets a diverse range of other sources, including oral traditions, fieldnotes of anthropologists, missionary writings and correspondence, unpublished state records, vernacular publications, and Zambian newspapers. Invisible Agents will challenge scholars and students alike to think in new ways about the political imagination and the invisible sources of human action and historical change.

As the 15-year Millennium Development Goals approach their conclusion, we can now measure their larger successes and failures in more than ?snapshot? fashion; and we can begin to consider how best to shape the international development agenda for the coming decades based on what we have learned. But the performance and outlook for the MDGs can neither be reduced to the sum of its eight goals, nor be divorced from international dynamics - the hard interests of states and other actors, and the global dynamics that impact on both. For that reason, this volume balances contextual analysis, the role of formative and constraining forces, the importance of normative considerations and illuminating case studies to deliver a study of the MDGs which has depth and nuance as well as breadth. Poised between judging the recent performance and the future promise of the MDGs, this book is substantial, provocative and timely.This book was published as a special issue of Third World Quarterly.