Africa Betrayed

By George B.N. Ayittey and Ayittey G

Book Overview

'...Ayittey's bitter reading is an appropriate first therapy to the malaise American policies have helped to breed. ' Wall Street Journal 'Ayittey is unpredictable - and provocative. I was prepared to hate Africa Betrayed, but found myself engrossed.' Village Voice Africans are angry. Thirty years of independence have brought nothing but economic misery, famine, senseless civil wars, wanton destruction, flagrant violations of human rights, and brutal repression. At independence from colonial rule, Africans had hoped for liberty, prosperity, and a new beginning. They have been cruelly disappointed. Ayittey writes devastatingly on the horrors of black neocolonialism, arguing that it is just not good enough for commentators always to blame external factors for Africa's misery. Ayittey sees a second liberation struggle building up throughout the continent - one that will sweep away the kleptocracy and rediscover the African traditions that have endured throughout the horrors of both white colonialism and black neocolonialism.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0312104006
• ISBN13: 9780312104009
• Release Date: December 1993
• Publisher: Palgrave MacMillan
• Length: 412 Pages
• Weight: 1.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 5.5" x 8.6"

Customer Reviews

Depressing Description of Current Conditions

I was a geographic specialist concerned with the mapping of Africa from 1964 to my retirement in 1998. I well remember the high hopes we once had that the newly freed Africans would be able to develop and join the developed world on equal terms. The author, of African heritage himself, has covered in great detail what went wrong. Resulting in the current anarchial state of affairs,with international and civil wars, ethnic cleansing, and economic ruin. With the end of the Cold War and the cutting back of aid from the First and Second Worlds, the Third is greatly the worse for it. This is a dam sad book and I never could finish it.