The Curse of Berlin: Africa After the Cold War

Adekeye Adebajo

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September, 2010
Cloth, 384 pages,
ISBN: 978-0-231-70200-3
$50.00

At the 1884-1885 Conference of Berlin, a collection of states, mostly European, established the rules for the partition of Africa. The consequences of their decision had immense historical and structural implications apparent in the domestic and international behavior of the continent today. The "Curse," as the conference came to be called, is the grounding theme of Adekeye Adebajo's trenchant study, though his guiding focus is the development of Africa after the Cold War.

Adebajo opens with Africa's quest for security, featuring essays on the continent's political institutions, such as the African Union and subregional bodies. He follows with chapters on the United Nations and its operations in Africa, particularly its political, peacekeeping, and socioeconomic missions. Adebajo includes two rare profiles of the secretary generals who worked with the UN from 1992 to 2006: Egypt's Boutros Boutros-Ghali and Ghana's Kofi Annan. Africa's pursuit of representative leadership informs the next section, with essays examining the hegemonic influence of South Africa, Nigeria, China, France, and the United States. Concluding chapters discuss Africa's search for unity, exploring the direct and indirect impact of Nelson Mandela, Thabo Mbeki, Kwame Nkrumah, Cecil Rhodes, Barack Obama, and Mahatma Gandhi. Adebajo also conducts a comparative assessment of the African and European Unions.

Related Subjects

• African Studies
• European History
• International Affairs

About the Author

Adekeye Adebajo is executive director of the Centre for Conflict Resolution in Cape Town, South Africa. A former Rhodes scholar at Oxford University, he has served as director of the Africa program of the New York-based International Peace Academy and has accompanied UN missions to South Africa, Western Sahara, and Iraq. He is the author of Building Peace in West Africa: Liberia's Civil War and coeditor of Managing Armed Conflicts in the Twenty-First Century; West Africa's Security Challenges; A Dialogue of the Deaf: Essays on Africa and the United Nations; South Africa in Africa; and From Global Apartheid to Global Village: Africa and the United Nations.

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