Africa

In the 1980s, countries across Asia stunned the world with meteoric economic growth—but when eyes turn to Africa today, it is often to lament corruption, violence, and poverty rather than to scout the next developmental frontrunners.

A “meticulously researched and comprehensive” (Financial Times) history of the devastating war in the heart of Africa’s Congo At the heart of Africa is the Congo, a country the size of western Europe. It borders nine other nations, and since 1996 it has been racked by a brutal war in which...

Decolonization has lost its way. Originally a struggle to escape the West's direct political and economic control, it has become a catch-all idea, often for performing "morality" or "authenticity;" it suffocates African thought and denies African agency....

In spite of Cyril Ramaphosa’s ‘new dawn’, there are powerful forces in the ruling party that risk losing everything if corruption and state capture finally do come to an end....

The dictator who grew so rich on his country's cocoa crop that he built a 35-storey-high basilica in the jungles of the Ivory Coast. The austere, incorruptible leader who has shut Eritrea off from the world in a permanent state of war and conscripted every adult into the armed forces....

The New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice A spellbinding work of history that reads like a Cold War spy thriller—about the U.S.-sanctioned plot to assassinate the democratically elected leader of the newly independent Congo A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New Yorker, The Economist...

A powerful investigation into a grisly political murder and the authoritarian regime behind it: Do Not Disturb upends the narrative that Rwanda sold the world after one of the deadliest genocides of the twentieth century. We think we know the story of Africa’s Great Lakes region. Following the...

Born in Blackness reframes the story of medieval and emerging Africa, demonstrating how the economic ascendancy of Europe, anchoring of democracy in the West, and fulfillment of so-called Enlightenment ideals grew out of Europe's dehumanizing engagement with the "dark" continent....

From one of the world’s greatest writers, the story of how the author found his voice as a novelist at Makerere University in Uganda....

For the first time in history, the navies of the world have united against a common enemy - a couple of thousand rag-tag, underfed men and boys in the western Indian Ocean....

The Super-Afrikaners, originally published in 1978, scandalised a nation as it exposed the secret workings of the Broederbond....

In "Black Africa: The Economic and Cultural Basis for a Federated State," Senegalese scholar Cheikh Anta Diop boldly calls for the unification of Black African nations.....

Why is Africa still perceived as a country when there are around 2,000 languages spoken on the continent alone? It's a Continent aims to counter the misconception that Africa is a country by breaking down this vast, beautiful and complex continent into regions and countries. Each of the 54...

In his short life, the Guyanese intellectual Walter Rodney emerged as one of the leading thinkers and activists of the anticolonial revolution, leading movements in North America, South America, the African continent, and the Caribbean....

What does it take to make a dictator answer for his crimes? Hissene Habre, the former despot of Chad, terrorized, tortured, and killed on a horrific scale over eight years in power—while enjoying full American and Western support....