From Publishers Weekly
The postcolonial countries of Africa turned to nationalism as a liberating force, but as Davidson observes in this profound inquiry, the modern African nation-state has meant harsh dictatorships, massive poverty and ever-increasing transfer of wealth to the industrialized world. Author of more than 20 books about Africa ( The African Genius ), he traces the roots of this crisis to Africans' slavishly copying European models of governance and denying their own past. Tribalism in Africa, he argues, has often been a force for good, creating progressive civil societies that were eventually undermined by alien rule and imperialist partition. Surveying renascent movements for democracy from Eritrea to South Africa, he sees the beginnings of a new politics of decentralization and grass-roots participation in self-government. With a masterful knowledge of the whole continentas is, evokes--is?--racist stereotype , Davidson in this energizing meditation delivers a powerful rejoinder to pessimists who would write off contemporary Africa.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Library Journal
In this thought-provoking book, Davidson, a prolific, longtime writer of African history and politics, discusses not only Africa and its overwhelming problems but also draws comparisons of the conditions and the causes of Africa's malaise with those of Central and Eastern Europe both in 1918 and today. He details the legacy of imperialism and the failures of the nation-states of Africa after independence. In a surprising conclusion, Davidson sees the ground for hope "in one or another mode of the politics of participation." He points to the Economic Community for West African States and the Southern African Development Coordination Conference as proposing projects that have "supposed a gradual dismantlement of the nation-statist legacy derived from imperialism, and the introduction of participatory structures within a wide regionalist framework." He reminds us finally that "even those most nationalist of peoples, the English and the French, might before long find themselves without sacred and sovereign frontiers between them." Recommended as a thought-provoking purchase.
- Maidel Cason, Univ. of Delaware Lib., NewarkCopyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
See all Editorial Reviews