Release Date: July 17, 2014
Publisher: James Currey
When Eritrea gained independence in 1991, hopes were high for its transformation. In two decades, however, it became one of the most repressive in the world, effectively a militarised "garrison state". This comprehensive and detailed analysis examines how the prospects for democracy in the new state turned to ashes, reviewing its development, and in particular the loss of human rights and the state's political organisation. Beginning with judicial development in independent Eritrea, subsequent chapters scrutinise the rule of law and the court system; the hobbled process of democratisation, and the curtailment of civil society; the Eritrean prison system and everyday life of detention and disappearances; and the situation of minorities in the country, first in general terms and then through exploration of a case study of the Kunama ethnic group. While the situation is bleak, it is not without hope, however: the conclusion focuses on opposition to the current regime, and offers scenarios of regime change and how the coming of a second republic may yet reconfigure Eritrea politically.
Kjetil Tronvoll is professor of peace and conflict studies at Bjoerknes College and author of War and the Politics of Identity in Ethiopia (2009) and Mai Weini: A Highland Village in Eritrea : A Study of the People, Their Livelihood, and Land Tenure During Times of Turbulence (1998).
His coauthor, Daniel R. Mekonnen, is senior legal advisor at the International Law and Policy Institute in Oslo. He cowrote (with Mirjam van Reisen) a chapter entitled "EU Development Cooperation: The Contours of Global and National Engagement" in Human Rights and Development in the new Millennium: Towards a Theory of Change (edited by Paul Gready and Wouter Vandenhole,2013). He also translated Gene Sharp's From Dictatorship to Democracy: A Conceptual Framework for Liberation into Tigrigna for the Albert Einstein Institution.
Mills is director of the Johannesburg-based Brenthurst Foundation, which “was established in 2005 by the Oppenheimer family,” he told me in an interview after a book forum at the Cato Institute in Washington. He is also the co-author, with David Williams, of 
[This book's] broad scope includes South Africa's pre-colonial history, slavery, Afrikaner nationalism, an environmental history and an analysis of a post-apartheid South Africa.
Africa has experienced two liberations: the first from colonial and racist regimes, and the second from the autocrats who often followed foreign rule. African countries now have the potential to undertake a third liberation - from political economies characterised by graft, crony capitalism, rents-seeking, elitism and social inequality. This third liberation will open up the economic space in which business can compete - a necessary condition for expanding employment. During the 2000s, the continent had its best growth decade on record since independence. High commodity prices offer a launch pad for sustained growth and employment creation. Now is the moment for African countries to act. This book asks how Africa's political leaders and interest groups can promote economic growth in their countries. Drawing on studies of countries outside Africa, Jeffrey Herbst and Greg Mills identify the factors separating the performers from the laggards worldwide. Aside from the need to create an enabling environment for business through good governance, provision of infrastructure and improvements in education, most critical is the need for a laser-like development focus by governments. In 
Happy Valley was the name given to the Wanjohi Valley in the Kenya Highlands, where a small community of affluent, hedonistic white expatriates settled between the wars. While Kenya's early colonial days have been immortalised by farming pioneers like Lord Delamere and Karen Blixen, and the pioneering aviator Beryl Markham, Happy Valley became infamous under the influence of troubled socialite, Lady Idina Sackville, whose life was told in Frances Osborne's bestselling The Bolter. The era culminated with the notorious murder of the Earl of Erroll in 1941, the investigation of which laid bare the Happy Valley set's decadence and irresponsibility, chronicled in another bestseller, James Fox's White Mischief. But what is left now? In a remarkable and indefatigable archaeological quest Juliet Barnes, who has lived in Kenya all her life and whose grandparents knew some of the Happy Valley characters, has set out to explore Happy Valley to find the former homes and haunts of this extraordinary and transient set of people. With the help of a remarkable African guide and further assisted by the memories of elderly former settlers, she finds the remains of grand residences tucked away beneath the mountains and speaks to local elders who share first-hand memories of these bygone times. Nowadays these old homes, she discovers, have become tumbledown dwellings for many African families, school buildings, or their ruins have almost disappeared without trace - a revelation of the state of modern Africa that makes the gilded era of the Happy Valley set even more fantastic. A book to set alongside such singular evocations of Africa's strange colonial history as The Africa House, 
Large-scale displacement - whether caused by war, state-related political or development projects, different forms of political violence, structural crisis, or even natural disasters - evokes many stereotyped assumptions about those forcibly displaced or emplaced. At the same time there is a problematic lack of attention paid to those who benefit economically from, manage, or in various unexpected ways are affected by processes of displacement.
A prizewinning foreign correspondent and former New York Times bureau chief in Shanghai and in West and Central Africa, Howard French is uniquely positioned to tell the story of China in Africa. Through meticulous on-the-ground reporting—conducted in Mandarin, French, and Portuguese, among other languages—French crafts a layered investigation of astonishing depth and breadth as he engages not only with policy-shaping moguls and diplomats, but also with the ordinary men and women navigating the street-level realities of cooperation, prejudice, corruption, and opportunity forged by this seismic geopolitical development. With incisiveness and empathy, French reveals the human face of China’s economic, political, and human presence across the African continent—and in doing so reveals what is at stake for everyone involved. 
Drawing on numerous recent examples of good and bad practice from around the continent, this insightful volume explores the legal issues involved in developing and enhancing good governance and accountability within African states, as well as addressing the need for other states worldwide to demonstrate the 'transnational political will' to support these efforts.
For postcolonial Africa, modernization was seen as a necessary outcome of the struggle for independence and as crucial to the success of its newly established states. Since then, the rhetoric of modernization has pervaded policy, culture, and development, lending a kind of political theatricality to nationalist framings of modernization and Africans’ perceptions of their place in the global economy. These 15 essays address governance, production, and social life; the role of media; and the discourse surrounding large-scale development projects, revealing modernization's deep effects on the expressive culture of Africa.
Robert G. Gregory challenges the apparent assumption that non-Western peoples lack a significant indigenous philanthropic culture. Focusing on the large South Asian community in East Africa, he relates how, over a century, they built a philanthropic culture of great magnitude, and how it finally collapsed under the ascendency of increasing state regulation and policies directed against non-African communities.
In this book, Florence Wambugu and Daniel Kamanga of Africa Harvest Biotech Foundation International bring together expert African authorities to critique various biotechnology initiatives and project future developments in the field in Africa. For the first time, African voices from multidisciplinary fields as diverse as economics, agriculture, biotechnology, law, politics and academia, demand to be allowed to set the continent’s biotech development agenda. This book argues that there is a great future for biotechnology in Africa which sidesteps western interests that do not match those of the local populace. In these diverse chapters, Africa’s political and scientific leaders demand a greater say in how research and development funds are allocated and spent. They argue that Africa’s political leaders must see both clear benefits and have elbow-room to drive the change required. This is the way that African governments can employ workable policies, suitable biosafety legislation and regulation and respond effectively to public-private partnerships. Wambugu and Kamanga show that biotechnology has the potential to improve food security and standard of living as well as mitigate the detrimental effects of climate change on the African continent.
Internal conflicts, dictatorship, and economic disintegration characterized the first twenty-five years of Uganda's independence from British colonial rule, which culminated in the reign of Idi Amin and a violent civil war. The country has since achieved an astounding turnaround of stability and growth. 
Come on a journey with Africa's finest nature photographer to lands of time-honoured cultural traditions and unspoilt natural wilderness. Here is the 'real Africa' - astonishing in its diversity of wildlife, breathtaking in its natural beauty and unforgettable in its bursting floral kingdom. Evocative Africa is a visual journey taking the reader through Gerald Cubitt's selection of the 'unmissable' in sub-Saharan Africa. This extensive collection of images juxtaposes the scale and grandeur of the continent with an intimate attention to smaller, less obvious wonders. The informative commentary reveals the social, ecological and geographical context of the images. The book bursts with a multitude of images. The reader will be immersed in South Africa, will visit Zimbabwe, Malawi, Mozambique, Tanzania, Kenya, Botswana and Namibia. Just offshore, no lifetime's safari on the east coast of Africa can ignore Madagascar, perhaps the most compelling hotspot of biodiversity in the world. Four and a half years have gone into the design and preparation of this book and the endeavour of the photographer and publisher is to make Evocative Africa the best of its kind ever produced in South Africa: a book that captures the magic and character of the 'real Africa' - its timeless wildlife and wilderness, its colourful and proud ethnic heritage and, of course, its stunning diversity of landscape. It represents the culmination of many years of photographing Africa, her people, her places and her wildlife. It celebrates destinations we can all enjoy, showing them in a new light, giving us many moments of delight from places we already know to be astonishing.