Nathan Nunn (UBC): The Long-Term Effects of Africa’s Slave Trades (and more). "When will the postcolonial hangover end?": Instead of marking a new beginning, the EU-Africa summit ended in bickering over new trade deals between the two continents. Africa Rising: Democracy is expanding, conflicts are ebbing, economies are growing at a healthy clip — the untold story of a continent that is surprising the pessimists. As the presidential contenders squabble over the leadership of the scandal-hit ANC, an Aids-ravaged South Africa is left to wonder what happened to the dream of the Rainbow Nation. A review of Diamonds, Gold and War: The Making of South Africa by Martin Meredith. A look at how Somalia is completing its devolutionary cycle. Is there hope for a new Zimbabwe after Mugabe? Arthur Mutambara is staking his life on it. In her Nobel acceptance speech, Doris Lessing recalls her childhood in Africa and laments that children in Zimbabwe are starving for knowledge. A review of The Columbia Guide to Central African Literature in English Since 1945 by Adrian Roscoe, and a review of Nadine Gordimer's Beethoven Was One-Sixteenth Black and Other Stories (and more). Ron Eglash on his work exploring the rigorous fractal math underpinning African architecture, art and even hair braiding.
