Understanding Contemporary Africa

The first edition of Understanding Contemporary Africa was the culmination of nearly three years of collaborative thought, research, and writing by a dedicated group of Africanist scholars and teachers. On the basis of informal conversations, and then in a broader survey of other Africanists teaching at the undergraduate level, we discovered that most of us were finding it difficult to locate a gird, up-to-date text on sub-Saharan Africa to use in our introductory courses. Available texts were, for the most part, too discipline-oriented-created especially for history, anthropology, or political science courses;they were to advanced for students with little prior background;or they were dated. On the other hand, some introductory texts on the market tried to do too much; they were so broad in scope that they lacked the theoretical base or scholarly depth we were looking for. This left professors compelled to use multiple readings from several different books and periodicals to cover their topics. We decided that for us as well as for many teachers of "Introduction of Africa" courses, the availability of a single text designed to address important contemporary topics and to provide background from a variety of academic subject areas would be an attractive alternative. It would save many of us from lengthy searches for material, time wasted with library reserve procedures or an expensive panoply of required book purchases. Addressing the above concerns provided the rationale for this book. The success of the book since the first edition in 1992 confirms our belief that understanding Contemporary Africa, with its broad scope, up-to-date and in-depth chapters, and attention to readability for undergraduate students, is a valuable text for both general African studies courses and disciplined-based courses. It covers many of the most important topics and issues needed for a grasp of the reality of sub-Saharan Africa in the early twenty-first century - for example, the environment, women's roles, population, AIDS, and urbanisation-that get little or no treatment in other texts. The information in this chapter of the book represents the best of the current research and thinking in various fields of study, providing students and professors with a useful background on Africa, and also presenting major issues in a way students can understand. And, although each chapter is designed to stand alone.