Towards The African Renaissance

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.

Contains 30 essays based on papers and speeches delivered at the African Renaissance Conference in Johannesburg in 1998. The subject matter ranges from overviews of Africa's history to moral renewal, culture and education, political and economic transformation, science and technology, and the role of the media and telecommunications. All the contributions have one thing in common: a strong African focus and a commitment to attain prosperity for the continent in the new millennium.

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.

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.

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.

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.