These are the Proceedings of International Conference on Engaging with a Resurgent Africa held at Observer Research Foundation, New Delhi during November 20-21, 2008.

This book demonstrates the changing dynamics of India’s engagement with Africa, focusing on trade, investment, official development assistance, capacity building activities and the diaspora. It also examines its impact at the economic, political and societal levels with respect to governance, democratic structures, education and health. India has competitive edge of historical goodwill and it is one of the most important countries engaging Africa in the 21st Century. For Africa, India has emerged from an aid recipient country to a major aid provider but on a basis of partnership model. The book provides a contemporary analysis and assessment of Indo-Africa relations, bringing together contributions from the Global South and from the North that explore whether the relationship is truly ‘mutually beneficial’.

In one of the first analyses of contemporary IndianAfrican relations, this detailed book draws upon a collection of case studies that explore interrelated topics such as trade, investment, development aid, civil society relations, security, and geopolitics. While China's relationship to Africa has been thoroughly examined, knowledge and analysis of India's role in Africa has until now been limited. This book fills the gap and compares and contrasts India to China s role as a rising global power in the African continent. "

‘Resurgent Africa: Structural Transformation in Sustainable Development’ is a study of structural change dynamics in Africa and its effect on job creation, living standards and the efficiency of productive cities through manufacturing productivity growth that benefit the majority. Empirical data from selected African countries, including Nigeria, Ghana, South Africa, Kenya, Rwanda and Ethiopia, provides in-depth analysis and knowledge of the continent’s diversified economies by establishing relationships between industrialization trends; rates of urbanization; and urban living standards, income growth and employment in Africa. The findings reveal unconventional pathways of structural change, patterns of jobless growth suggesting economic growth that does not necessarily lead to employment, dominance of services at the expense of manufacturing industry explaining the regress in Africa’s industrial sector and occurrence of structural transformation without improvement in labour productivity. These are important concerns for Africa’s long-term development leading to the conclusion that sustainable urbanization and industrialization are not only closely connected but also key drivers of economic change. The book includes recommendations for policymakers to adopt a new approach to development for a resurgent Africa.

Africans and Globalization: Linguistic, Literary, and Technological Contents and Discontents considers the substance and dissatisfactions of globalization on Africa and its Diaspora. Although variously framed across disciplines, globalization has generally entailed non-milieu bound interactions, which alters the existence of its participants. The concerns about the impact of globalization have been raised in relation to Africa and have related to the helpful and deleterious effects. Increasingly, industrialization (without consideration of environmental impacts) and westernization (including erosion of indigenous values) are perceived as synonymous with globalization. This multidisciplinary collection contends that in theory, globalization linked Africa with the world through trade and information sharing, thereby increasing development. This collection provides reflections based on contemporary research within the linguistic, literary, and technological areas of study. It illustrates that globalization is not a single process but rather a complex set of processes that seemingly operate in an oppositional manner. The collected works make for exciting appraisal as they highlight some of the contents and discontents of globalization across multiple areas of human endeavor in Africa and its diaspora.

Is there a new scramble for Africa involving China, Japan, and India in competition with each other and with the Western world? In the second half of the twentieth century, Mao’s China and Jawaharlal Nehru’s India were political players in Africa, while Japan limited itself to trade and investment in Africa. Africa and Asia have historically been allies against Western exploitation and have also been rivals as producers of raw materials. India and West Asia have led the way in the soft power of culture and religion in Africa while Japan and China have engaged in the harder disciplines of the economy and the construction of infrastructure. This book explores the historical and unfolding dynamic interactions among China, India, Japan, and Africa and their ramifications.

The Global Obama examines the president’s image in five continents and more than twenty countries. It is the first book to look at Barack Obama’s presidency and analyze how Obama and America are viewed by publics, governments, and political commentators around world. The author of Barack Obama in Hawaii and Indonesia: The Making of a Global President (Top 10 Black History Book) scaled the globe to gather opinions – cultural, historical, and political analyses – about Obama’s leadership style. Writers, journalists, psychologists, consultants, and social scientists present their views on Obama’s leadership, popularity, and many of the global challenges that still remain unresolved. As a progress report, this is the first book that tries to grasp ‘the Obama phenomenon’ in totality, as perceived by populations around the world with special focus on America’s leadership in the 21st Century.

In this fully revised edition top scholars in African politics address the effects that major currents in Africa and world politics have upon each other and explore the ramifications of this interconnection for contemporary theories of international and comparative politics. The fifth edition focuses on engaging a changing world order. The nation-state as we know it is a legacy of European rule in Africa, and the primacy of the nation-state remains the bedrock of most contemporary theories of international relations. Yet in the fifth decade of Africa's independence, this colonial inheritance has been challenged as never before by state weakness, internal and inter-state conflict, new gains in economic development, large investments by China and other G-20 countries, and internal and external demands for economic and political reform, with potentially far-reaching implications. Including new readings on the Sudan, the Great Lakes crisis, and bilateral vs. multilateral peacekeeping on the continent, this text remains an invaluable resource for students of African and world politics.

In recent years, China and India have become the most important economic partners of Africa and their footprints are growing by leaps and bounds, transforming Africa's international relations in a dramatic way. Although the overall impact of China and India's engagement in Africa has been positive in the short-term, partly as a result of higher returns from commodity exports fuelled by excessive demands from both countries, little research exists on the actual impact of China and India's growing involvement on Africa's economic transformation. This book examines in detail the opportunities and challenges posed by the increasing presence of China and India in Africa, and proposes critical interventions that African governments must undertake in order to negotiate with China and India from a stronger and more informed platform.