Book of the month

Xoliswa Ndoyiya: Ukutya Kwasekhaya  [June 2013]

Xoliswa Ndoyiya: Ukutya KwasekhayaTastes from Nelson Mandela’s kitchen

A collection of recipes by Nelson Mandela's personal chef, this book contains the food served to visiting heads of state, celebrities, politicians for more than 20 years. Featuring some of the favourite former South African president's favourite meals including samp and beans, farm chicken, tripe, this book also features paella, peri-peri chicken, prawn curry, and myriad of other delights. With simple, delicious and nourishing recipes, it will interest those who wish to prepare meals that are both elegant and healthy.More

Understanding Organizational Sustainability Through African Proverbs: Insights For Leaders And Facilitators  [January 2013]

African cultural heritage, passed on from generation to generation, has been a source of guidance for African communities in times of peace, uncertainty, birth, life and earth. In Understanding Organizational Sustainability Through African Proverbs, the power of traditional wisdom contained in African proverbs is directed at organizational development and change. The result is a fresh new perspective on organizational management with important lessons for organizational leaders, consultants, volunteers and expatriates working or preparing to work in Africa. By discovering the power of African proverbs, readers are rewarded with new and creative ways to communicate organizational improvement efforts in a language that touches peoples hearts and motivates them to personal and organizational transformation. The book specifically addresses the needs of leaders and consultants implementing performance improvement and organizational change and contains proverb-driven assessment templates.More

Looking for Transwonderland: Travels in Nigeria  [December 2012]

Noo Saro-Wiwa was brought up in England, but every summer she was dragged back to Nigeria - a country she viewed as an annoying parallel universe where she had to relinquish all her creature comforts and sense of individuality. Then her father, activist Ken Saro-Wiwa, was murdered there, and she didn't return for 10 years. Recently, she decided to rediscover and come to terms with the country her father loved. She travelled from the exuberant chaos of Lagos to the calm beauty of the eastern mountains; from the eccentricity of a Nigerian dog show to the empty Transwonderland Amusement Park - Nigeria's decrepit and deserted answer to Disneyland.More

Sins of the fathers  [June 2012]

Book review by Samwin Banienuba (UK), International spokesman for Humanitas Afrika

Stephen Atalebe is a wordsmith and in Sins of the fathers he weaves and spins the culture of a people into an African tale of awe, intrigue and suspense from one page to the next. A kind of cultural critique he subtly challenges the reader throughout the story to take difficult positions between what is held to be culturally valid and what reason dictates to be morally right.More

How Rich Countries Got Rich...and Why Poor Countries Stay Poor  [May 2011]

In this refreshingly revisionist history, Erik S. Reinert shows how rich countries developed through a combination of government intervention, protectionism, and strategic investment—rather than through free trade. Yet when our leaders lecture poor countries on the right path to riches they do so in almost perfect ignorance of the fact that our economies were founded on protectionism long before they could afford the luxury of free trade. How Rich Countries Got Rich… will challenge economic orthodoxy and open up the debate on why self-regulating markets are not the best answer to our hopes of worldwide prosperity.More

Building Social Business. The New Kind of Capitalism That Serves Humanity's Most Pressing Needs  [February 2011]

In this book, Yunus shows how social business has gone from being a theory to an inspiring practice, adopted by leading corporations, entrepreneurs, and social activists. He demonstrates how social business transforms lives; offers practical guidance for those who want to create social businesses of their own; explains how public and corporate policies must adapt to make room for the social business model; and shows why social business holds the potential to redeem the failed promise of free-market enterprise.More

From Mukogodu to Maasai: Ethnicity and Cultural Change in Kenya  [December 2010]

Anthropologist Lee Cronk looks into the question of whether one or an entire group can change one´s ethnicity. He is exploring these issues by repeatedly staying and doing research with the Mukogodu of Kenya. Until the 1920s and 1930s, the Mukogodo were Cushitic-speaking foragers (hunters, gatherers, and beekeepers). However, changes brought on by British colonial policies led them to move away from life as independent foragers and into the orbit of the high-status Maasai, whom they began to emulate. Although Lee Cronk focuses on this particular ethnic group, his observations are worth knowing about since they reflect processes that work within various communities and many times, even against our expectations, and trigger all kinds of unexpected consequences.More

Blue Sweater: Bridging the Gap between Rich and Poor in an Interconnected World  [July 2010]

Jacqueline Novogratz left a career in international banking to spend her life on a quest to find solutions how to contribute to diminishing poverty in the world. J. Novogratz’s approach differs from other attempts of NGOs with similar goals in that she and groups of people working with her have attempted supporting for-profit entrepreneurial activities.More

Unbowed  [May 2010]

This charismatic and strong Kenyan woman Wangari Maathai talks about her incredibly intense life. In this book W. Maathai shares with the reader memories of her childhood, when only through a coincidental course of events her mother decided to send her to school; her studies at university in Kenya and in the USA, her obtaining a Doctorate degree, founding the renowed Green Belt Movement, struggle in defending women’s rights, a number of futile attempts at helping to bring about a societal change during a dictatorial regime of president Daniel arap Moi, receiving the Nobel Prize, or her work at the ministry of environment. W. Maathai led a movement of activists in a long fight to create new forested areas and/or defend the ones that were already in existence. The government and thugs hired by the government repeatedly used violence against them. Despite this, W. Maathai and other activists just continued in their resilient fight.More

Africa Yearbook 5 : Politics, Economy and Society South of the Sahara in 2008  [April 2010]

The Africa Yearbook covers major domestic political developments, the foreign policy and socio-economic trends in sub-Sahara Africa - all related to developments in one calendar year. The Yearbook contains articles on all sub-Saharan states, each of the four sub-regions (West, Central, Eastern, Southern Africa) focusing on major cross-border developments and sub-regional organizations as well as one article on continental developments and one on European-African relations.