Africa is playing a more important role in
world affairs than ever before. Yet the most common images of Africa in the
American mind are ones of poverty, starvation, and violent conflict. But while
these problems are real, that does not mean that Africa is a lost cause.
Instead, as Stephen Ellis explains in Season of Rains, we need to
rethink Africa’s place in time if we are to understand it in all its
complexity—it is a region where growth and prosperity coexist with failed
states. This engaging, accessible book by one of the world’s foremost
researchers on Africa captures the broad spectrum of political, economic, and
social foundations that make Africa what it is today.
Ellis is careful not to position himself in
the futile debate between Afro-optimists and Afro-pessimists. The forty-nine
diverse nations that make up sub-Saharan Africa are neither doomed to fail nor
destined to succeed. As he assesses the challenges of African sovereignties,
Ellis is not under the illusion that governments will suddenly become more
benevolent and less corrupt. Yet, he sees great dynamism in recent
technological and economic developments. The proliferation of mobile phones
alone has helped to overcome previous gaps in infrastructure, African retail
markets are becoming integrated, and banking is expanding. Businesses from
China and emerging powers from the West are investing more than ever before in
the still land-rich region, and globalization is offering possibilities of
enormous economic change for the growing population of one billion Africans,
actively engaged in charting the future of their continent.
This highly readable survey of the
continent today offers an indispensable guide to how money, power, and
development are shaping Africa’s future.
