Africa faces several major development challenges that have adversely affected the political and material well being of the majority of the people living there. This collection of new essays rigorously analyzes those frontier development issues--including democracy, leadership, the economy, poverty alleviation through microfinance schemes, food security, education, health and political instability--and offers prescriptions that differ from the dominant neoliberal solutions.

African Renaissance: New Forms, Old Images in Yoruba Art describes, analyzes, and interprets the historical and cultural contexts of an African art renaissance using the twentieth- and twenty-first-century transformation of ancient Yoruba artistic heritage. Juxtaposing ancient and contemporary Yoruba art, Moyo Okediji defines this art history through the lens of colonialism, an experience that served to both destroy ancient art traditions and revive Yoruba art in the twentieth century. With vivid reproductions of paintings, prints, and drawings, Okediji describes how Yoruba art has replenished and redefined itself. Okediji groups the text into several broadly overlapping periods that intricately detail the journey of Yoruba art and artists: first through oppression by European colonialism, then the attainment of Nigeria’s independence and the new nation’s subsequent military coup, and ending with present-day native Yoruban artists fleeing their homeland.

"The book - as the outcome of a research performed by the University of Florence and the United States Institute of Peace of Washington - explores the role of law in the process of democratic transition in South Africa. More specifically it emphasize how constitutional law may contribute to "civilize" apparently reconcilable conflicts, a part from laying down the foundations of the new legal order and institutions. The book - as the outcome of a research performed by the University of Florence and the United States Institute of Peace of Washington - explores the role of law in the process of democratic transition in South Africa. More specifically it emphasize how constitutional law may contribute to "civilize" apparently reconcilable conflicts, a part from laying down the foundations of the new legal order and institutions"--Publisher's description

Contemporary Africa and the Foreseeable World Ordersheds light on theplace of "Africa Agency” in the competitive and changing global system. This book provides scholars, policymakers, and other stakeholders studying and working on African issues with innovative solutions, strategies, knowledge, insights, case studies, and analyses to support decision-making on how best African states should position themselves in the dynamic global system in order to influence key decisions. Featuring themes such as the African Union (AU) and the consequences of the discovery of oil in the non-traditional oil exporting countries, the editors and contributors have demonstrated why and how Africa’s position in the foreseeable world order is largely dependent on the influence of both existing and emerging world powers. .

The purpose of this book is to engage challenging issues that are called into question during ministerial training. This is a volume presenting eleven contested issues that attend to concerns related to structures, processes, knowledge and practices within theological education. Contributors offer keen insights about how to think differently and more complexly about these matters within a changing South Africa. It is an affirmation of the multiple voices, locations, identities and positions within South African theological education, as a starting point for transformative theological education. It is hoped that these reflections can enable future ministers to confront the question of how to be in the world with the required competence, integrity and professional identity to meet the needs of church and society.

From politics to economics, science and engineering, this book raises the bar on the debate about the place of Africa in the world. As Africa continues the search for relevance, influence, peace, progress, and stability in a highly competitive global system, 'Africa Rise Up!' interrogates the historical and contemporary forces, agency, and factors that combine to affect the location of the continent in the global order. The contributors argue for a paradigm shift in both theory and praxis of national, regional, and continental efforts geared toward the realization of the much-needed African Renaissance. The strength of this book lies in its interpretation of the African condition through the lens of African-centred epistemologies.

A host of voices has risen to challenge Western core dominance of the field of International Relations (IR), and yet, intellectual production about world politics continues to be highly skewed. This book is the second volume in a trilogy of titles that tries to put the "international" back into IR by showing how knowledge is actually produced around the world. The book examines how concepts that are central to the analysis of international relations are conceived in diverse parts of the world, both within the disciplinary boundaries of IR and beyond them. Adopting a thematic structure, scholars from around the world issues that include security, the state, authority and sovereignty, globalization, secularism and religion, and the "international" - an idea that is central to discourses about world politics but which, in given geocultural locations, does not necessarily look the same. By mapping global variation in the concepts used by scholars to think about international relations, the work brings to light important differences in non-Western approaches and the potential implications of such differences for the IR discipline and the study of world politics in general. This is essential reading for anyone who is concerned about the history, development and future of International Relations.

James Weldon Johnson’s Modern Soundscapes provides an evocative and meticulously researched study of one of the best known and yet least understood authors of the New Negro Renaissance era. Johnson, familiar to many as an early civil rights leader active in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and an intentionally controversial writer on the subject of the significance of race in America, was one of the most prolific, wide-ranging, and yet elusive authors of twentieth-century African American literature. Johnson realized early in his writing career that he could draw attention to the struggles of African Americans by using unconventional literary methods such as the incorporation of sound into his texts. In this groundbreaking work, literary critic Noelle Morrissette examines how his literary representation of the extremes of sonic experience—functioning as either cultural violence or creative force—draws attention to the mutual contingencies and the interdependence of American and African American cultures. Moreover, Morrissette argues, Johnson represented these “American sounds” as a source of multiplicity and diversity, often developing a framework for the interracial transfer of sound. The lyricist and civil rights leader used sound as a formal aesthetic practice in and between his works, presenting it as an unbounded cultural practice that is as much an interracial as it is a racially distinct cultural history. Drawing on archival materials such as early manuscript notes and drafts of Johnson’s unpublished and published work, Morrissette explores the author’s complex aesthetic of sound, based on black expressive culture and cosmopolitan interracial experiences. This aesthetic evolved over the course of his writing life, beginning with his early Broadway musical comedy smash hits and the composition of Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man (1912), and developing through his “real” autobiography, Along This Way (1933). The result is an innovative new interpretation of the works of one of the early twentieth century’s most important and controversial writers and civil rights leaders.

Since 1994, the democratic government in South Africa has worked hard at improving the lives of the black majority, yet close to half the population lives in poverty, jobs are scarce, and the country is more unequal than ever. For millions, the colour of people's skin still decides their destiny. In his wide-ranging, incisive and provocative analysis, Hein Marais shows that although the legacies of apartheid and colonialism weigh heavy, many of the strategic choices made since the early 1990s have compounded those handicaps. Marais explains why those choices were made, where they went awry, and why South Africa's vaunted formations of the left -- old and new -- have failed to prevent or alter them. From the real reasons behind President Jacob Zuma's rise and the purging of his predecessor, Thabo Mbeki, to a devastating critique of the country's continuing AIDS crisis, its economic path and its approach to the rights and entitlements of citizens, South Africa Pushed to the Limit presents a riveting benchmark analysis of the incomplete journey beyond apartheid.