The noted political scientist Ali Mazrui explores six fundamental paradoxes of Africa today, focusing on Africa's key geographical position in relation to issues of economic distribution and social justice.

Global imperial designs, which have been in place since conquest by western powers, did not suddenly evaporate after decolonization. Global coloniality as a leitmotif of the empire became the order of the day, with its invisible technologies of subjugation continuing to reproduce Africa’s subaltern position, a position characterized by perceived deficits ranging from a lack of civilization, a lack of writing and a lack of history to a lack of development, a lack of human rights and a lack of democracy. The author’s sharply critical perspective reveals how this epistemology of alterity has kept Africa ensnared within colonial matrices of power, serving to justify external interventions in African affairs, including the interference with liberation struggles and disregard for African positions. Evaluating the quality of African responses and available options, the author opens up a new horizon that includes cognitive justice and new humanism.

Are there social, political and cultural factors in Africa which aspire to the continuation of patrimony and conspire against economic development? In association with the International African Institute North America: Indiana U Press

Curing their Ills traces the history of encounters between European medicine and African societies in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Vaughan's detailed examination of medical discourse of the period reveals its shifting and fragmented nature, highlights its use in the creation of the colonial subject in Africa, and explores the conflict between its pretensions to scientific neutrality and its political and cultural motivations. The book includes chapters on the history of psychiatry in Africa, on the treatment of venereal diseases, on the memoirs of European 'Jungle Doctors', and on mission medicine. In exploring the representations of disease as well as medical practice, Curing their Ills makes a fascinating and original contribution to both medical history and the social history of Africa.

Power, Politics, and the African Condition is the third volume of The Collected Essays of Ali A. Mazrui, which will provide readers with a broad spectrum of Ali. A. Mazrui's scholarly writings. The third volume is centered on issues of power and politics at the nexus of Africa's domestic affairs and its international concepts about the disequilibrium of power in the international system and the problems that Africa has confronted globally because of it. Mazrui focuses the reader's attention on the impact that the colonial legacy and African tradition had on state formation, leadership, Africa's political economy, violence and conflict resolution while presenting some of his most interesting and even controversial ideas for building "Pax Africana." Spanning nearly forty years, Mazrui's essays are classic and contemporary statements on the diagnosis and treatment of what he called "The African Condition."

News footage of disease in Africa is a familiar sight. Yet these outbreaks are often presented out of context, with no reference to the conditions that have triggered them. MISTRA’s new book, Epidemics and the Health of African Nations, aims to redress that. Researchers and practitioners from within the continent explore why Africa is so vulnerable to disease, and show how this vulnerability is closely linked to political and economic factors. They demonstrate how these same factors determine the way epidemics are treated. Authors extract lessons from case studies in different parts of Africa; challenge conventional frameworks about disease to argue for a ‘syndemics’ approach that takes into account the interrelationship between disease and political and socio-economic contexts; explore challenges of Africa’s future. They argue that a well-functioning health system is at the core of a country’s capacity to counter an epidemic. This volume brings African experts together to probe possible solutions to the continent’s heavy burden of disease. The insights offered will be helpful in devising policy for the control of disease and the combatting of epidemics in Africa.

Divided into eight sections, each with introductory essays, the selections offer rich and detailed insights into a diverse multinational philosophical landscape. Revealed in this pathbreaking work is the way in which traditional philosophical issues related to ethics, metaphysics, and epistemology, for instance, take on specific forms in Africa's postcolonial struggles. Much of its moral, political, and social philosophy is concerned with the turbulent processes of embracing modern identities while protecting ancient cultures.

Biographical sketches of modern Africans from varied walks of life illustrate the individual and societal conflicts of a continent in the process of transition between two cultures

The perspectives provided in this volume offer wise and refreshing alternatives to problems of self and society, culture, aesthetics, metaphysics, and religion.

Exploring issues of disability culture, activism, and policy across the African continent, this volume argues for the recognition of African disability studies as an important and emerging interdisciplinary field.