The Challenge for Africa: New Vision for a Forgotten Continent

The Challenge for Africa: New Vision for a Forgotten Continent

by WangariMaathai (Author)

Synopsis

Maathai argues that Africans need to revive their sense of identity, their cultural inheritance, and a shared sense of common purpose to face the challenges posed by endemic corruption, the legacies of colonialism and the Cold and civil wars, poverty, and - most urgently - climate change. Endless images of nameless starving children aimed at guilt-tripping westerners have been internalised, leading to a demoralised, passive inertia among millions of citizens. Elections may have spread but the true fabric of democracy is often still tragically absent. Only once the continent has rediscovered its own cultural inheritance can it take active responsibility for its own future. Ultimately what Africa needs is a revolution in leadership, but this cannot be ushered in by western governments, well-meaning NGOs, or even Bono and Sharon Stone - it must happen within African civil society itself. As in Unbowed, Maathai's voice is decisive, authoritative, and unsentimental.

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More Information

Format: Hardcover
Pages: 336
Publisher: William Heinemann Ltd
Published: 18 Jun 2009

ISBN 10: 0434019801
ISBN 13: 9780434019809
Book Overview: Nobel Peace Prize-winner Wangari Maathai offers a manifesto for C21st Africa.

Media Reviews
'From one of Africa's most positive and far-sighted thinkers comes a wonderful book combining an elegant critique of Africa's troubled past with a rallying cry for how Africans can use culture, nature and self-belief to reverse their continent's decline. The Challenge for Africa is a milestone in African writing that both educates and inspires.' Tim Butcher, author of the bestselling Blood River
Author Bio
Wangari Muta Maathai was born in Nyeri, Kenya, in 1940. She is the founder of the Green Belt Movement, which, through networks of rural women, has planted over 30 million trees across Kenya since 1977. In 2002, she was elected to Kenya's Parliament in the first free elections in a generation, and served as Deputy Minister for the Environment and Natural Resources. The Nobel Peace Prize laureate of 2004, she has three grown children and lives and works in Nairobi.