EBookClubs

Read Books & Download eBooks Full Online

EBookClubs

Read Books & Download eBooks Full Online

Book How We Made It in Africa

    Book Details:
  • Author : Jaco Maritz
  • Publisher :
  • Release : 2018-11
  • ISBN : 9780620818438
  • Pages : 260 pages

Download or read book How We Made It in Africa written by Jaco Maritz and published by . This book was released on 2018-11 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the founder of the award-winning website (www.howwemadeitinafrica.com) comes the stories of 25 entrepreneurs who''ve built thriving businesses. * Be inspired by the experiences of Africa''s most dynamic entrepreneurs * Gain insight into the continent''s business opportunities * Find the courage to make your own dreams and ambitions become a reality Discover why Ken Njoroge is building a billion-dollar pan-African digital payments company (it is not because he wants to drive a Ferrari); Find out how Jean de Dieu Kagabo grew a Rwanda-based industrial group from a simple product: toilet paper; And be inspired by the extraordinary tale of Hassan Bashir who created a booming insurance company from nothing but grit and persistence. Each entrepreneur''s story is told in an honest manner, not shying away from the mistakes made and the considerable hurdles they had to overcome. And there were many tough times: from being betrayed by long-time senior managers to losing vast sums of money because of poor market research. Pursuing their business ambitions also had a toll on their personal lives: one entrepreneur was too broke to afford diapers for his baby, while another had to sell her house to keep the company alive. MEET THE ENTREPRENEURS 1. Ken Njoroge (Kenya): The long, hard journey to build a billion-dollar company 2. Tseday Asrat (Ethiopia): A modern twist on Ethiopia''s coffee culture 3. Tumi Phake (South Africa): Flexing his entrepreneurial muscles to exploit a gap in the fitness industry 4. Monica Musonda (Zambia): Instant noodle pioneer 5. Hassan Bashir (Kenya): An insurance firm created from nothing but grit and persistence 6. Ebele Enunwa (Nigeria): A $50-million food and retail empire 7. Tayo Oviosu (Nigeria): The entrepreneur who traded in his Silicon Valley life to bring mobile money to Nigerians 8. Navalayo Osembo (Kenya): How to make a Kenyan running shoe 9. Jean de Dieu Kagabo (Rwanda): Rwandan industrialist always hunting for the next big business idea 10. Addis Alemayehou (Ethiopia): Serial entrepreneur bringing the world to Ethiopia 11. Kasope Ladipo-Ajai (Nigeria): Nigerian cooking made convenient 12. Chijioke Dozie (Nigeria): Leveraging past experiences to disrupt the banking industry 13. Sylvester Chauke (South Africa): Marketer with a passion to take African brands global 14. Yoadan Tilahun (Ethiopia): Showing Ethiopia how to throw an event 15. Mossadeck Bally (Mali): West African hotel group built on an appetite for risk 16. Jennifer Bash (Tanzania): Adding value to everyday staples 17. Jesse Moore (Kenya): Thinking out of the box to power over 600 000 homes with solar energy 18. Twapewa Kadhikwa (Namibia): How one hair salon became a group of companies 19. Jacques de Vos (South Africa): Growing a high-impact tech business one problem statement at a time 20. Nana Akua Birmeh (Ghana): Architect breaking glass ceilings 21. Nelly Tuikong (Kenya): Kenyan beauty brand taking on global giants 22. Dr Hend El Sherbini (Egypt): From a small Egyptian family business to a London-listed healthcare giant 23. NJ Ayuk (Cameroon): A lawyer on the road less travelled 24. Polo Leteka (South Africa): The investor who spots opportunity where others see risk 25. Ashley Uys (South Africa): Diagnostic hustler ABOUT THE AUTHOR Jaco Maritz is CEO of Maritz Africa, publisher of the award-winning pan-African online business publication How we made it in Africa. Jaco holds a BA in Information Science from USB. He started his career at South African media company Media24, working on the websites of some of the country''s most well-known newspapers. He went on to become editor of TradeInvestNigeria, after which he founded Maritz Africa. When not building Maritz Africa, Jaco enjoys investing in other businesses. He is a regular speaker on business in Africa.

Book Africa s Business Revolution

Download or read book Africa s Business Revolution written by Acha Leke and published by Harvard Business Press. This book was released on 2018-10-30 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Definitive Guide to Doing Business in Africa For global and Africa-based companies looking to access new growth markets, Africa offers exciting opportunities to build large, profitable businesses. Its population is young, fast-growing, and increasingly urbanized--while rapid technology adoption makes the continent a fertile arena for innovation. But Africa's business environment remains poorly understood; it's known to many executives in the West only by its reputation for complexity, conflict, and corruption. Africa's Business Revolution provides the inside story on business in Africa and its future growth prospects and helps executives understand and seize the opportunities for building profitable, sustainable enterprises. From senior leaders in McKinsey's African offices and a leading executive on the continent, this book draws on in-depth proprietary research by the McKinsey Global Institute as well as McKinsey's extensive experience advising corporate and government leaders across Africa. Brimming with company case studies and exclusive interviews with some of Africa's most prominent executives, this book comes to life with the vibrant stories of those who have navigated the many twists and turns on the road to building successful businesses on the continent. Combining an unrivalled fact base with expert advice on shaping and executing an Africa growth strategy, this book is required reading for global business executives looking to expand their existing operations in Africa--and for those seeking a road map to access this vast, untapped market for the first time.

Book 101 Ways to Make Money in Africa

Download or read book 101 Ways to Make Money in Africa written by John-Paul Iwuoha & and published by . This book was released on 2015-01-15 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Book How Europe Underdeveloped Africa

Download or read book How Europe Underdeveloped Africa written by Walter Rodney and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2018-11-27 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The classic work of political, economic, and historical analysis, powerfully introduced by Angela Davis In his short life, the Guyanese intellectual Walter Rodney emerged as one of the leading thinkers and activists of the anticolonial revolution, leading movements in North America, South America, the African continent, and the Caribbean. In each locale, Rodney found himself a lightning rod for working class Black Power. His deportation catalyzed 20th century Jamaica's most significant rebellion, the 1968 Rodney riots, and his scholarship trained a generation how to think politics at an international scale. In 1980, shortly after founding of the Working People's Alliance in Guyana, the 38-year-old Rodney would be assassinated. In his magnum opus, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, Rodney incisively argues that grasping "the great divergence" between the west and the rest can only be explained as the exploitation of the latter by the former. This meticulously researched analysis of the abiding repercussions of European colonialism on the continent of Africa has not only informed decades of scholarship and activism, it remains an indispensable study for grasping global inequality today.

Book How to Write About Africa

Download or read book How to Write About Africa written by Binyavanga Wainaina and published by One World. This book was released on 2024-06-04 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From one of Africa’s most influential and eloquent essayists, a posthumous collection that highlights his biting satire and subversive wisdom on topics from travel to cultural identity to sexuality “A fierce literary talent . . . [Wainaina] shines a light on his continent without cliché.”—The Guardian “Africa is the only continent you can love—take advantage of this. . . . Africa is to be pitied, worshipped, or dominated. Whichever angle you take, be sure to leave the strong impression that without your intervention and your important book, Africa is doomed.” Binyavanga Wainaina was a pioneering voice in African literature, an award-winning memoirist and essayist remembered as one of the greatest chroniclers of contemporary African life. This groundbreaking collection brings together, for the first time, Wainaina’s pioneering writing on the African continent, including many of his most critically acclaimed pieces, such as the viral satirical sensation “How to Write About Africa.” Working fearlessly across a range of topics—from politics to international aid, cultural heritage, and redefined sexuality—he describes the modern world with sensual, emotional, and psychological detail, giving us a full-color view of his home country and continent. These works present the portrait of a giant in African literature who left a tremendous legacy.

Book Digital Entrepreneurship in Africa

Download or read book Digital Entrepreneurship in Africa written by Nicolas Friederici and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2020-07-28 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The hope and hype about African digital entrepreneurship, contrasted with the reality on the ground in local ecosystems. In recent years, Africa has seen a digital entrepreneurship boom, with hundreds of millions of dollars poured into tech cities, entrepreneurship trainings, coworking spaces, innovation prizes, and investment funds. Politicians and technologists have offered Silicon Valley-influenced narratives of boundless opportunity and exponential growth, in which internet-enabled entrepreneurship allows Africa to "leapfrog" developmental stages to take a leading role in the digital revolution. This book contrasts these aspirations with empirical research about what is actually happening on the ground. The authors find that although the digital revolution has empowered local entrepreneurs, it does not untether local economies from the continent's structural legacies.

Book Made in Africa

Download or read book Made in Africa written by Carol Newman and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The role of industry in low income countries is important. Industry is good for growth, job creation, and poverty reduction. All of these factors depend on the size and the rate of growth of industry. Africa doesn’t have enough industry to reach the Sustainable Development Goals for growth, job creation, and poverty reduction. Africa’s share of global manufacturing has fallen from about three percent in 1970 to less than two percent in 2010. Why is there so little industry in Africa? Made in Africa: Learning to Compete in Industry outlines a new industrialization strategy to help Africa compete in global markets. This book draws on case study and qualitative research from Africa and emerging Asia to understand what drives firm-level productivity in low income countries. The results show that while traditional concerns such as infrastructure, skills, and the regulatory environment are important, they alone will not be sufficient for Africa to industrialize. The book also addresses how industrialization strategies willneed to adapt to the region’s growing resource abundance.

Book Africa Rising

    Book Details:
  • Author : Vijay Mahajan
  • Publisher : Pearson Prentice Hall
  • Release : 2011-07-07
  • ISBN : 0132716119
  • Pages : 289 pages

Download or read book Africa Rising written by Vijay Mahajan and published by Pearson Prentice Hall. This book was released on 2011-07-07 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With more than 900 million consumers, the continent of Africa is one of the world’s fastest growing markets. In Africa Rising, renowned global business consultant Vijay Mahajan reveals this remarkable marketplace as a continent with massive needs and surprising buying power. Crossing thousands of miles across the continent, he shares the lessons that Africa’s businesses have learned about succeeding on the continent...shows how global companies are succeeding despite Africa’s unique political, economic, and resource challenges...introduces local entrepreneurs and foreign investors who are building a remarkable spectrum of profitable and sustainable business opportunities even in the most challenging locations...reveals how India and China are staking out huge positions throughout Africa...and shows the power of the diaspora in driving investment and development. Recognize that Africa is richer than you think Africa is richer than India on the basis of gross national income (GNI) per capita, and a dozen African countries have a higher GNI per capita than China. Aim for Africa Two Opportunities exist in all parts of the market, particularly the 400 million people in the middle of the market. Find opportunities to organize the market From retailing to cell phones to banking, companies are succeeding by building infrastructure. Develop strategies for the most youthful market in the world Companies are recognizing opportunities from diapers to music to medicine in a market growing younger every day. Understand that Africa is not a “media dark” continent From Nollywood to satellite to broadband, media is exploding on the continent. Recognize the hidden strength of the African diaspora The African diaspora brings resources and knowledge to African development and expands the African opportunity beyond the continent. Build Ubuntu markets Create profitable businesses, sustainable growth, and social organizations by meeting basic human needs.

Book The Next Africa

Download or read book The Next Africa written by Jake Bright and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2015-07-21 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Next Africa, an Axiom Best Business Book Award winner, will change the way people think about the continent. The old narrative of an Africa disconnected from the global economy, depicted by conflict or corruption, and heavily dependent on outside donors is fading. A wave of transformation driven by business, modernization, and a new cadre of remarkably talented Africans is thrusting the continent from the world's margins to the global mainstream. In the coming decades the magnitude of Africa's markets and rising influence of its people will intersect with other key trends to shape a new era, one in which Africa's progress finally overshadows its challenges, transforming an emerging continent into a global powerhouse. The Next Africa captures this story. Authors Jake Bright and Aubrey Hruby pair their collective decades of Africa experience with several years of direct research and interviews. Packed with profiles; personal stories, research and analysis, The Next Africa is a paradigm-shifting guide to the events, trends, and people reshaping Africa's relationship to the world. Bright and Hruby detail the cross-cutting trends prompting Silicon Valley venture capital funds and firms like GE, IBM, and Proctor & Gamble to make major investments in African economies, while describing how Africans are stimulating Milan runways, Hollywood studios, and London pop charts. The Next Africa introduces readers to the continent's burgeoning technology movement, rising entrepreneurs, groundbreaking philanthropists, and cultural innovators making an impact in music, fashion, and film. Bright and Hruby also connect Africa's transformation to its contemporary immigrant diaspora, illustrating how this increasingly affluent group will serve as the thread that pulls the continent's success together. Finally, The Next Africa suggests a fresh framework for global citizens, public policy-makers, and CEOs to approach Africa. It will no longer be "The Hopeless Continent", nor will it become an overnight utopia. Bright and Hruby offer a more nuanced, net-sum, and data-rich approach to analyzing an increasingly complex continent, reconciling its continued challenges with rapid progress. The Next Africa describes a future of a more globally-connected Africa where its leaders and citizens wield significant economic, cultural, and political power--a future in which Americans will be more likely to own African stocks, work for companies doing business in Africa, buy African hits from iTunes, see Nigerian actors win Oscars, and learn new African names connected to tech moguls and billionaires.

Book How South Africa Works

    Book Details:
  • Author : Jeffrey Herbst
  • Publisher : Pan Macmillan South africa
  • Release : 2015-07-01
  • ISBN : 1770104097
  • Pages : 261 pages

Download or read book How South Africa Works written by Jeffrey Herbst and published by Pan Macmillan South africa. This book was released on 2015-07-01 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The overwhelming challenge that South Africa faces, and has to date failed to address, is unemployment, which falls especially on African youths who were promised a better future after 1994. If the current unemployment challenge is not addressed, it will be impossible to sustainably lift many millions of people out of poverty. How South Africa Works reviews the country’s major economic achievements over the past two decades. Through numerous interviews with politicians, business leaders and analysts, it examines the challenges and opportunities across key productive sectors – including agriculture, manufacturing, services, and mining – illustrative of the policy challenges that leaders face. It scrutinises the social grant and education systems to understand if South Africa has established mechanisms for people not only to escape destitution but be ready to be employed, and identifies steps that some of South Africa’s most notable entrepreneurs have taken to build world-class enterprises. Recognising the essential challenge to cultivate more employers to employ people, How South Africa Works concludes by offering an agenda and active steps for greater competitiveness for government, business and labour.

Book Born in Blackness  Africa  Africans  and the Making of the Modern World  1471 to the Second World War

Download or read book Born in Blackness Africa Africans and the Making of the Modern World 1471 to the Second World War written by Howard W. French and published by Liveright Publishing. This book was released on 2021-10-12 with total page 444 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Revealing the central yet intentionally obliterated role of Africa in the creation of modernity, Born in Blackness vitally reframes our understanding of world history. Traditional accounts of the making of the modern world afford a place of primacy to European history. Some credit the fifteenth-century Age of Discovery and the maritime connection it established between West and East; others the accidental unearthing of the “New World.” Still others point to the development of the scientific method, or the spread of Judeo-Christian beliefs; and so on, ad infinitum. The history of Africa, by contrast, has long been relegated to the remote outskirts of our global story. What if, instead, we put Africa and Africans at the very center of our thinking about the origins of modernity? In a sweeping narrative spanning more than six centuries, Howard W. French does just that, for Born in Blackness vitally reframes the story of medieval and emerging Africa, demonstrating how the economic ascendancy of Europe, the anchoring of democracy in the West, and the fulfillment of so-called Enlightenment ideals all grew out of Europe’s dehumanizing engagement with the “dark” continent. In fact, French reveals, the first impetus for the Age of Discovery was not—as we are so often told, even today—Europe’s yearning for ties with Asia, but rather its centuries-old desire to forge a trade in gold with legendarily rich Black societies sequestered away in the heart of West Africa. Creating a historical narrative that begins with the commencement of commercial relations between Portugal and Africa in the fifteenth century and ends with the onset of World War II, Born in Blackness interweaves precise historical detail with poignant, personal reportage. In so doing, it dramatically retrieves the lives of major African historical figures, from the unimaginably rich medieval emperors who traded with the Near East and beyond, to the Kongo sovereigns who heroically battled seventeenth-century European powers, to the ex-slaves who liberated Haitians from bondage and profoundly altered the course of American history. While French cogently demonstrates the centrality of Africa to the rise of the modern world, Born in Blackness becomes, at the same time, a far more significant narrative, one that reveals a long-concealed history of trivialization and, more often, elision in depictions of African history throughout the last five hundred years. As French shows, the achievements of sovereign African nations and their now-far-flung peoples have time and again been etiolated and deliberately erased from modern history. As the West ascended, their stories—siloed and piecemeal—were swept into secluded corners, thus setting the stage for the hagiographic “rise of the West” theories that have endured to this day. “Capacious and compelling” (Laurent Dubois), Born in Blackness is epic history on the grand scale. In the lofty tradition of bold, revisionist narratives, it reframes the story of gold and tobacco, sugar and cotton—and of the greatest “commodity” of them all, the twelve million people who were brought in chains from Africa to the “New World,” whose reclaimed lives shed a harsh light on our present world.

Book The Bright Continent

Download or read book The Bright Continent written by Dayo Olopade and published by HMH. This book was released on 2014-03-04 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “For anyone who wants to understand how the African economy really works, The Bright Continent is a good place to start” (Reuters). Dayo Olopade knew from personal experience that Western news reports on conflict, disease, and poverty obscure the true story of modern Africa. And so she crossed sub-Saharan Africa to document how ordinary people deal with their daily challenges. She found what cable news ignores: a continent of ambitious reformers and young social entrepreneurs driven by kanju—creativity born of African difficulty. It’s a trait found in pioneers like Kenneth Nnebue, who turned cheap VHS tapes into the multimillion-dollar film industry Nollywood. Or Ushahidi, a technology collective that crowdsources citizen activism and disaster relief. A shining counterpoint to conventional wisdom, The Bright Continent rewrites Africa’s challenges as opportunities to innovate, and celebrates a history of doing more with less as a powerful model for the rest of the world. “[An] upbeat study of development in Africa . . . The book is written more in wonder at African ingenuity than in anger at foreign incomprehension.” —The New Yorker “A hopeful narrative about a continent on the rise.” —The New York Times Book Review

Book The Idea of Development in Africa

Download or read book The Idea of Development in Africa written by Corrie Decker and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-10-29 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An engaging history of how the idea of development has shaped Africa's past and present encounters with the West.

Book Emerging Africa

    Book Details:
  • Author : Kingsley Chiedu Moghalu
  • Publisher : Penguin UK
  • Release : 2014-07-24
  • ISBN : 0141979461
  • Pages : 432 pages

Download or read book Emerging Africa written by Kingsley Chiedu Moghalu and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2014-07-24 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A rare and timely intervention from Kingsley Chiedu Moghalu, Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, on development in Africa. To many, Africa is the new frontier. As the West lies battered by financial crisis, Africa is seen as offering limitless opportunities for wealth creation in the march of globalization. But what is Africa to today's Africans? Are its economies truly on the rise? And what is its likely future? In this pioneering book, leading international strategist Kingsley Moghalu challenges conventional wisdoms about Africa's quest for growth. Drawing on philosophy, economics and strategy, he ranges from capitalism to technological innovation, finance to foreign investment, and from human capital to world trade to offer a new vision of transformation. Ultimately he demonstrates how Africa's progress in the twenty-first century will require nothing short of the reinvention of the African mindset. 'Africans seriously analyzing Africa's opportunities are all too rare. Kingsley Moghalu writes with insight and authority' Paul Collier 'Savvy . . . distinguished' Mark Malloch-Brown 'Unique in the depth of its insight, the ambition of its scope, and the clarity of its argument. Kingsley Moghalu brings a remarkable intellect and his vast experience to this tour de force on Africa's economic transformation. This is a truly weighty contribution to understanding Africa's developmental dilemma and its quest for a more prosperous future' Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala 'Insightful and analytical . . . sheds instructive light on Africa's position in the world. It is a testament to the palpable optimism that encompasses Africa while frankly addressing the myriad challenges that lie ahead for its economic transformation' Shashi Tharoor Kingsley Chiedu Moghalu is Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria. He was the Founder and CEO of Sogato Strategies S.A., a global strategy and risk management consulting firm in Geneva, Switzerland. He has previously worked for the United Nations for 17 years in strategic planning, legal, development finance and executive management. His previous books include Global Justice and Rwanda's Genocide.

Book Africa Rise and Shine

Download or read book Africa Rise and Shine written by Jim Ovia and published by Forbesbooks. This book was released on 2018 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The road to success is rarely linear and never easy. Despite countless setbacks, Jim Ovia, founder of Zenith Bank, was able to achieve the unthinkable. Africa Rise and Shine is the story of Ovia's business and banking success and how he was able to create one of Africa's largest banks. Spanning decades of both world and Nigerian history, Africa Rise and Shine dives deep into the events that led to Ovia's triumph. Drawing upon his educational experiences and relentless determination, Ovia was able to overcome every hurdle that stood in the way of his bank becoming the national icon that it is today. Africa Rise and Shine outlines the tough, yet necessary business decisions that were essential to Zenith's prolonged success and is filled with valuable takeaways for every businessperson. Learn from one of the best in banking what it takes to truly be successful.

Book Unlocking Africa s Business Potential

Download or read book Unlocking Africa s Business Potential written by Landry Signe and published by Brookings Institution Press. This book was released on 2020-04-07 with total page 361 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Africa welcomes business investment and offers some of the world's highest returns and impacts Africa has tremendous economic potential and offers rewarding opportunities for global businesses looking for new markets and long-term investments with favorable returns. Africa has been one of the world's fastest-growing regions over the past decade, and by 2030 will be home to nearly 1.7 billion people and an estimated $6.7 trillion worth of consumer and business spending. Increased political stability in recent years and improving regional integration are making market access easier, and business expansion will generate jobs for women and youth, who represent the vast majority of the population. Current economic growth and poverty-alleviation efforts mean that more than 43 percent of the continent's people will reach middle- or upper-class status by 2030. Unlocking Africa's Business Potential examines business opportunities in the eight sectors with the highest potential returns on private investment—the same sectors that will foster economic growth and diversification, job creation, and improved general welfare. These sectors include: consumer markets, agriculture and agriprocessing, information and communication technology, manufacturing, oil and gas, tourism, banking, and infrastructure and construction. The book's analysis of these sectors is based on case studies that identify specific opportunities for investment and growth, along with long-term market projections to inform decision-making. The book identifies potential risks to business and offers mitigation strategies. It also provides policymakers with solutions to attract new business investments, including how to remove barriers to business and accelerate development of the private sector.

Book China s Second Continent

Download or read book China s Second Continent written by Howard W. French and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2015-02-03 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times Notable Book Chinese immigrants of the recent past and unfolding twenty-first century are in search of the African dream. So explains indefatigable traveler Howard W. French, prize-winning investigative journalist and former New York Times bureau chief in Africa and China, in the definitive account of this seismic geopolitical development. China’s burgeoning presence in Africa is already shaping, and reshaping, the future of millions of people. From Liberia to Senegal to Mozambique, in creaky trucks and by back roads, French introduces us to the characters who make up China’s dogged emigrant population: entrepreneurs singlehandedly reshaping African infrastructure, and less-lucky migrants barely scraping by but still convinced of Africa’s opportunities. French’s acute observations offer illuminating insight into the most pressing unknowns of modern Sino-African relations: Why China is making these cultural and economic incursions into the continent; what Africa’s role is in this equation; and what the ramifications for both parties and their people—and the watching world—will be in the foreseeable future. One of the Best Books of the Year at • The Economist • The Guardian • Foreign Affairs