Constant war, improper use of natural resources and misappropriation of revenues and aid monies contribute to an impression of a continent beyond hope. Ever since the process of de-colonialisation began in the mid-1950s, and arguably before, the continent has appeared to be stuck in a process of irreversible decline. ( )Īfrica is forever on our TV screens, but the bad-news stories (famine, genocide, corruption) massively outweigh the good (South Africa). The continent is too fragmented and diverse. This book provides a framework for these histories, but the idea of a comprehensive narrative of post-colonial Africa within a single set of covers, such as Tony Junt's book on post-war Europe, is unrealistic.

African history, from what I learned here, is a collection of histories of individual states. The notion of a history of Africa as a singular thing is unrealistic.

I don't think that this is a fault of the book, but rather it is a fault of my expectations. What it didn't do was to explain why this pattern repeated itself so regularly in each of these countries. It also told endless tales of civil war and corruption. I wanted to know how Kwame Nkrumah handled Ghana's transition to independence, what had happened to Nigeria since Biafra, how South Sudan and Eritrea sustained separatist movements. I was looking for a book to summarize the recent history of Africa as I felt that I had a clearer sense of its colonial history than its post-colonial history. Authoritative, provocative and consistently fascinating, this is the updated edition of the seminal book on one of the most important issues facing the West today. How did we get here? What, if anything, is to be done? Fully revised and updated and weaving together the key stories and characters of the last sixty years into a stunningly compelling and coherent narrative, Martin Meredith has produced the definitive history of how European ideas of how to organise 10,000 different ethnic groups has led to what Tony Blair described as the 'scar on the conscience of the world'.

Africa is forever on our TV screens, but the bad-news stories (famine, genocide, corruption) massively outweigh the good (South Africa).

The fate of africa by martin meredith