Written by Africans about Africans, this is the first thorough and truly informative analysis of the Biafran conflict.

After independence those countries that emerged in the new Africa, post scramble, lost the identities of their indigenous homelands some of which were great nations. This includes the Biafra Kingdom. They now have nothing to show for their previous exalted existence. There exists, today, a much desired principle of retracing the natural boundaries of indigenous African nations destroyed and distorted by balkanization resulting from the scramble for Africa by the Europeans, and following the Berlin Conference of 1884-1885. The original boundaries of the Biafra homeland can, and is to be, retrieved. When that is done, what do we do with it? The great answer lies in the Biafra Federation into which the Biafra Kingdom is to be retrieved, a great Federation of champion nations which, in every sense, is the center of the world.

In 1961, Rosina 'Rose' Martin married John Umelo, a young Nigerian she met on a London Tube station platform, eventually moving to Nigeria with him and their children. As Rose taught Classics in Enugu, they found themselves caught up in Nigeria's Civil War, which followed the 1967 secession of Eastern Nigeria--now named Biafra. The family fled to John's ancestral village, then moved from place to place as the war closed in. When it ended in 1970, up to 2 million had died, most from starvation. Rose ('worse off than some, better off than many') had kept notes, capturing the reality of living in Biafra--from excitement in the beginning to despair towards the end. Immediately after the war, Rose turned her notes into a narrative that described the ingenious ways Biafrans made do, still hoping for victory while their territory shrank and children starved by the thousand. Now anthropologist S. Elizabeth Bird contextualizes Rose's story, providing background on the progress of the war and international reaction to it. Edited and annotated, Rose's vivid account of life as a Biafran 'Nigerwife' offers a fresh, new look at hope and survival through a brutal war.

This book is more than just a study of ethnic politics in Kenya and Nigeria. The two countries are a microcosm of the entire continent: the problems it faces, its successes and failures, and the hope and despair of hundreds of millions of its people whose aspirations have been frustrated by decades of corrupt leadership that has skilfully exploited one of Africa's biggest weaknesses -- tribalism. But the people themselves are also responsible for that. They have allowed tribalism to flourish and destroy the countries. And they have allowed unscrupulous politicians to use and abuse them -- without storming the Bastille. What they are not responsible for is dictatorship African leaders instituted to perpetuate themselves in office by exploiting tribalism. These despots have been so good at it, and have done it for so long since independence, that many African countries are now on the brink of collapse, with the people at war against themselves.