African Interest

Brief Summary During the Second World War over half-a-million African troops served with the British Army as combatants and non-combatants in campaigns in the Horn of Africa, the Middle East, Italy and Burma - the largest single movement of African men overseas since the slave trade. This account, based mainly on oral evidence and soldiers' letters, tells the story of the African experience of the war. It is a 'history from below' that describes how men were recruited for a war about which most knew very little. Army life exposed them to a range of new and startling experiences: new foods and forms of discipline, uniforms, machines and rifles, notions of industrial time, travel overseas, new languages and cultures, numeracy and literacy. What impact did service in the army have on African men and their families? What new skills did soldiers acquire and to what purposes were they put on their return? What was the social impact of overseas travel, and how did the broad umbrella of army welfare services change soldiers' expectations of civilian life? And what role if any did ex-servicemen play in post-war nationalist politics? In this book African soldiers describe in their own words what it was like to undergo army training, to travel on a vast ocean, to experience battle, and their hopes and disappointments on demobilization. DAVID KILLINGRAY is Professor Emeritus of History, Goldsmiths, and Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, University of London. ISBN:9781847010476 Author:David Killingray and Martin Plaut

Brief Summary This is the first volume in a new series Africa: Policies for Prosperity. For the first time in more than a generation, sustained economic growth has been achieved across the continent - despite the downturn in global economic fortunes since 2008 - and in many countries these gains have been realized through policy reforms driven by the decisive leadership of a new generation of economic policymakers. The process of reform is continuous, however, and the challenge currently facing this new generation is how to harness these favourable gains in macroeconomic stability and turn them into a coherent strategy for sustainable growth and poverty reduction over the coming decades. These challenges are substantial and encompass the broad remit of economic policy. Each volume in this series brings leading scholars into the policy arena to examine these challenges and to lay out, in a rigorous but accessible manner, key challenges and policy options facing policymakers on the continent. Kenya has experienced a period of high and sustained growth since the mid 1990s, growth that has involved economic transformation away from a heavy reliance on traditional economic activities towards an emerging manufacturing economy. But this process, and the economic and social stability that had come to characterize Kenya, have been severely tested by the post-election violence of 2008. Restoring equitable growth and sustaining the structural transformation of the economy is essential if Kenya is to leave this period behind. The chapters in this volume address the key issues that will face economic policy makers in the coming years. They cover the conventional but central questions of finance and macroeconomic management, but also much deeper structural issues of trade, employment generation and education; of land policy, migration and urbanization; and the fiscal challenges facing an ageing but increasingly urbanized, and increasingly affluent, society. ISBN:9780199602377 Author:Christopher Adam Paul Collier and Njuguna Ndungu

Brief Summary In 2005, twenty-two years of civil war in Sudan were brought to an end by the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement. Negotiations between north and south had ended in compromise, however, and hopes of a unified state that was open, democratic and secular, had fallen to secession. Following South Sudan’s declaration of independence in 2011, political tensions have led to conflict in both countries and now there is even the growing threat of a war between them. The situation is, arguably, worse than it ever has been before. Sudan expert Jok Madut Jok investigates how violence has once more come to dominate a region where various political groups remain separated by deep-rooted mistrust and ethnic relations are nothing short of wrecked. Dissecting the failure of the peace agreement, he confronts the frightening possibility that it may have actually, in effect, legitimized the use of violence for the achievement of political goals. More than just a scrupulous survey of two countries ravaged by war, The Breakup of Sudan features starkly drawn portraits that provide a moving insight into how the Sudanese of the post-secession era continue to live with war. ISBN:9781786070043 Author:Jok Madut Jok