The History And Government Of Sub Saharan Africa

All of human history begins in Sub-Saharan Africa, where scientists believe the first humans lived. Over time, thousands of ethnic groups inhabited the area, creating villages, cities, unique cultures, and governments. This book explores the historical events, movements, and people who have shaped the region of Sub-Saharan Africa over its long and varied history. How did the transatlantic slave trade affect the region? How did colonialism change the existing governments there? Readers will travel to Sub-Saharan Africa through primary sources, informative text, fact-filled sidebars, and breathtaking photographs to find the answers.

The last fifty years have seen unprecedented changes in people s standards of living all over the world. Despite explosive population growth, it has proved possible to dramatically elevate the quality of life. On average people s lives have improved, all over the world, on every continent. Except Africa. Africa is the only large, contiguous region left out of the worldwide rise in prosperity. Why is that? Why has Africa failed to develop? Roel van der Veen (the Netherlands, 1957) is a historian by training. He deals with sub-Saharan Africa in his daily work. In "What went wrong with Africa" he describes the recent history of the continent and explores the causes of its widespread poverty, the AIDS epidemic and the misrule, corruption and disintegration afflicting so many African states."

A presentation of important issues in the study of modern Africa. It addresses: decolonization and the end of Empire; democracy and the nation state; epidemics in Africa - the human and financial costs; development - failure or success; the African environment - origins of a crisis; and more.

Authors Christensen and Laitin argue that an interplay of geographic, historical, and demographic factors undergird sub-Saharan states' post-independence struggles to eradicate poverty, establish democratic accountability, and quell civil unrest. They set out the founding fathers' challenges in transforming their postcolonial states, many of which are ethnically diverse, geographically diffuse, sparsely populated, and lacking in administrative capacity. With the legacies of the slave trade, partition, Christian missionaries, and extractive colonial institutions complicating their efforts, many African states faced stagnation, authoritarianism, and civil strife. Recent years have seen promising attempts to restore democracy to states under authoritarian rule and to liberalize their economies, suggesting that the region is moving toward a new era. Relying on the best statistical data and richly illustrated with case material, this book is an indispensable source for scholars and policy analysts seeking to understand Africa's post-independence political trajectories.

This book attempts to correct the impression created by Western media that Sub-Saharan Africa is in a state of anarchy. The text analyzes and shows that while many Sub-Saharan African nations are experiencing the worst time of their history, others are enjoying their best times. Thus, the text argues that although some parts of Africa are experiencing crisis, the continent is also a fine region of major new experiments in governance, peace building and free market transformation programs. Finally, the text focuses some of its analyses on the colonial legacy, economic and ethnic transformation, indigenous institutions and other forces that seem to influence the governance of Sub-Saharan African nations.

How should failed states in Africa be understood? Catherine Scott here critically engages with the concept of state failure and provides an historical reinterpretation. She shows that, although the concept emerged in the context of the post-Cold War new world order, the phenomenon has been attendant throughout (and even before) the development of the Westphalian state system. Contemporary failed states, however, differ from their historical counterparts in one fundamental respect: they fail within their existing borders and continue to be recognised as something that they are not. This peculiarity derives from international norms instituted in the era of decolonisation, which resulted in the inviolability of state borders and the supposed universality of statehood. Scott argues that contemporary failed states are, in fact, failed post-colonies. Thus understood, state failure is less the failure of existing states and more the failed rooting and institutionalisation of imported and reified models of Western statehood. Drawing on insights from the histories of Uganda and Burundi, from pre-colonial polity formation to the present day, she explores why and how there have been failures to create effective and legitimate national states within the bounds of inherited colonial jurisdictions on much of the African continent.