An intellectual tour de force, this bold, imaginative and provocative analysis of Africa's striving for political stability and economic growth demonstrates the potential for an African Renaissance today. One of Africa's leading intellectuals, Okumu analyses new initiatives such as NEPAD and discusses their potential role in Africa's economic welfare and future, while putting forward his own practical, policy oriented programme for an African Renaissance.

The information revolution is transforming the world, especially the industrialised world. But what are its implications for the implementation of an African renaissance? Based on a Foucaultian analytical framework this book argues that the Internet has become a major Western instrument of domination in Africa. By extending the reach of Western hegemonic discourses, the Internet adds another dimension to Western discursive power. However, by allowing for the active participation in the process of naming the world, the Internet also affords unprecedented means of transcending dependency.

This book provides the first comprehensive academic study of what China's trade with, and investment in, African countries mean for the socio-economic well-being of the continent. Based on the African Tree of Organic Growth Framework developed in the book, Jonker and Robinson outline the factors necessary in realizing Africa's Renaissance vision and the impact that the Chinese might have on this process. Using the metaphor of the Baobab tree, the authors analyze the historical, cultural and economic contexts within African countries, the channels available to produce development and growth, and the fruits or social and economic well-being created by this integrated process. The book takes readers on a journey of numerous African examples and case studies, describing and analyzing the challenges and complexities of countries in their desire to achieve organic, cultural, scientific and economic renewal, and the improvement of the well-being of their citizens. This book will be of great value to economists, people who wish to do business in Africa, China-watchers, those who are following the development and growth of Africa, and more.

This book looks at the challenges and possibilities facing leadership in Africa today by providing a rich history of the continent, the complexities the continent has experienced, and the great hope and encouragement that remains. It explores what African leadership is and the possible effects it has on leaders, followers, and organizations across the continent. While some maintain that leadership of and within Africa presents too many challenges, this book argues that Africa is ripe with potential and on the verge of an African Renaissance. This book looks beyond socioeconomic factors to explore different perspectives of leadership such as holistic, transformational, and servant leadership, as well as values and ethics. Taking a philosophical and pragmatic approach, this edited collection provides insight from African-born leadership scholars to deliver a first-hand account of the challenges the continent faces. Their unique experiences and immersion in the African world pave the way for a revival of leadership through a lens of history, tradition, economics, societal, and leadership perspectives.

The African Renaissance and the Afro-Arab Spring addresses the often unspoken connection between the powerful call for a political-cultural renaissance that emerged with the end of South African apartheid and the popular revolts of 2011 that dramatically remade the landscape in Egypt, Libya, and Tunisia. Looking between southern and northern Africa, the transcontinental line from Cape to Cairo that for so long supported colonialism, its chapters explore the deep roots of these two decisive events and demonstrate how they are linked by shared opposition to legacies of political, economic, and cultural subjugation. As they work from African, Islamic, and Western perspectives, the book’s contributors shed important light on a continent’s difficult history and undertake a critical conversation about whether and how the desire for radical change holds the possibility of a new beginning for Africa, a beginning that may well reshape the contours of global affairs.

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.

This volume explores what it means to be an African in a political context in which such people are called upon to re-assert the value of identifying as African in order to counter the effects of neo-colonialism. This includes affirming visions of what Africanness can offer in terms of people’s being-in-the-world. The book also discusses the benefits associated with working together as people of African ancestry, as well as the evocation of Ubuntu. It focuses on the possibility of revisiting the urge for African rebirth, and shows how the idea of Pan-Africanism helps to keep this dream alive. It engages with a range of ideas that build on the Pan-African philosophy for grounding African cultural and political rebirth, and will contribute to debunking the mindset that prompts many African youths and adults to risk it all for an apparently better life on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean.

The Africa of today is different from that of yesterday. The Africa of today is witnessing a renaissance, one that is not merely going to change leaders and whitewash old structures. It is a renaissance that is seeing real changes taking place: meaningful political reforms, the building of democratic institutions, economic reforms, freedom of the press, etc. Such changes are spearheaded by new leadership in Africa. This new leadership has rekindled the spirits of Africans, awakening them to the new day at hand, an African Dawn. This book is about such a renaissance. It thus differs from other books that only paint a gloomy picture of Africa. It offers a balanced view, tracing where Africa came from, the colonial, post colonial to the present post-post colonial periods. Each period is critically analyzed and the legacies outlined. Based upon such analyses, it talks about the impending African Renaissance as a result of the reforms developed and implemented by post-post colonial African leadership. By outlining some of the challenges, the new leadership in Africa would face as they create their renaissance and offering solutions to some of these challenges, this book holds no illusions that the creation of the African Renaissance would be easy. The task of creating the African Renaissance should not be shouldered by the new leadership of Africa and Africans alone; the global community must play their part by creating a Global Constituency for Africa. Through such a constituency, the global community can contribute in many ways to help Africa realize its renaissance. The road ahead for Africa lies in unity: by uniting politically, economically and socially, a sustainable African Renaissance is assured. To attempt to go it alone on the part of individual African nations in this era of globalization is suicidal.

The term African Renaissance, first used by liberation leaders in the early 1960's, has been revived by South Africa's new president, Thabo Mbeki, as a rallying call for the re-birth of pride and prosperity on the continent. With the flowering of democracy in South Africa, there is an awakening sense of pride in being African, in all it's dimensions. African Renaissance, from the camera of renowned photographer Peter Magubane, celebrates something of what it means to be African. His insightful eye explores not only fast-disappearing traditional cultures, but also the developing customs of modern Africa, an amalgam of the ancient and the contemporary. The guide is arranged by theme, covering subjects such as dress and adornment, rites of passage and homesteads. The section on dress and adornment examines beadwork, headgear and traditional dress, while the section on rites of passage takes a look at various initiation ceremonies, and at traditional and modern weddings.