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Towards a New Map of Africa Edited by Ben Wisner, Camilla Toulmin, Rutendo Chitiga (Earthscan Publications) The year 2005 has seen Africa take centre stage on the global political agenda. The Blair Commission on Africa report was launched in March and was the focus of attention at the meeting of G8 heads of government in Scotland in July. The review of the Millennium Declaration in September at the UN General Assembly will highlight the particular difficulties faced by many African countries in making progress towards achievement of the Millennium Development Goals. In November, the 13th Conference of the Parties to the Climate Change Convention will be hosted in Montreal, which will provide yet clearer evidence for the damaging and escalating impacts of climate change on the security and livelihoods of people around the world. Foremost among those affected are communities in the least developing countries, mainly in Africa. And, in December, in Hong Kong we hope the World Trade Organization will agree a timetable for phasing out by rich country governments of subsidies on farm production and export of food-stuffs.

For many people lobbying for change in global policy, 2005 constitutes a year when we must achieve a radical shift in relations between rich and poor nations. Part of this involves educating the citizens of rich nations about the impacts for good or ill of their actions on people the other side of the planet, whether through the effects of global warming on rainfall patterns, recruitment of scarce nursing staff from Ghana, Malawi and South Africa, or the dumping of cheap farm products on market prospects for Africa's smallholder farmers.

But much of this global debate skates over the huge diversity of experience, perspectives and practice within the continent. 'Africa is often spoken of as though it is a single country with a single set of problems – universally beset by conflict, hunger, disease and misgovernment. And despite the huge wealth of talent and experience in many parts of the continent, too much pontificating about Africa is carried out by European or North American researchers, consultants and politicians. Too little is heard of multiple voices and visions –particularly women's voices and visions – expressed by those from this enormous and varied land.

Hence, this collection of papers in Towards a New Map of Africa provides a very welcome body of evidence of how changes in economy, environment and politics have panned out in diverse settings across the continent. Originally conceived to follow-up Lloyd Timberlake's landmark book – Africa in Crisis, published in 1985 – this selection of papers takes a long-term perspective on many of the changes underway. This helps to avoid the snapshot approach so common with much writing on Africa. History has left only too many heavy imprints on the lives and landscapes of today, in the form of institutions, power structures and distribution of wealth. Many of the hardest challenges now being faced involve the righting of past historic wrongs, as we see with the urgent need for land reform in southern Africa. The book also represents a collaboration between a range of actors in Africa, Europe and the US, and builds on networks linking friends and colleagues of many years' standing.

The book rightly argues that there are many positive initiatives underway throughout the continent, which need higher profile and which act as a source of inspiration. Often against the odds, African farmers and entrepreneurs demonstrate great energy and ingenuity in improving their living conditions. Governments need to find much better ways of supporting such dynamism, recognizing the value of a vibrant entrepreneurial culture in which the state provides credible and predictable systems of regulation and administration. We must also acknowledge that there are great challenges to be faced in areas of conflict, where social and political structures have broken down, and the horrifying consequences for families, communities, even whole societies of the continued advance of HIV/ AIDS. Global support for the African Union is vital to help them check the causes of conflict, strengthen capacity for peace-keeping and bring to justice the violent warlords who slaughter, rape and pillage with impunity. Thankfully, making serious inroads into diseases like malaria has now become a global project, after decades of neglect.

At the core of development in all parts of the world, a new compact is needed between citizens and the state to restate the principles of accountability and the mutual rights and responsibilities that tie people and government. But non-state structures also count. These play a hugely important role in spiritual, social and economic life in many parts of Africa. They provide in many places the major share of health, education and caring services where government provision is woefully inadequate. They are also of vital importance in providing some kind of check and balance on governments that too often enjoy the fruits of power with little reference to their constituents.

Like so many, I hoped that the 21st century would usher in an era of greater peace and prosperity, in which through collective global action we could take in hand problems of climate change and huge inequities in life chances. The fall of the Berlin Wall could have provided a dividend to invest in development and peace. But the last ten years have shown us a harsher face. The new security agenda and the focus on the war against terrorism have worsened divisions around the world, divisions which we must bridge if we are to uphold the rule of law at all levels — whether local, national or global. We need to press for a global alliance which has security at its heart, but a security borne of justice, equity and respect.

Bay of Tigers: An Odyssey through War-torn Angola by Pedro Rosa Mendes, Clifford Landers (Translator) (Harcourt, Inc.) In 1997, Pedro Rosa Mendes, award-winning Portuguese journalist, traveled across Africa – 6,000 miles from the west to the east coast, from Angola to Mozambique – on trains with no windows, no doors, no seats, on wrecks of trucks and buses, on boats and motorcycles. Considering the hardships that Mendes endured during the course of his trip, one wonders why he saw it through to the end.

In war-torn Angola, a country where land mines outnumber people, Mendes found long lines of villagers waiting for shock treatment to neutralize the phantom pain in amputated limbs, an apothecary's tent purveying boiled mucumbi bark to combat scurvy lesions in the mouth, and trains crowded with people eating salted fish and drinking beer, swapping tales of local sorcerers who can turn into snakes. He interviewed international relief workers and corrupt local officials, widows and orphans, soldiers and survivors, piecing together a rich portrait no history or travel book can match.

In the author’s note at the beginning of Bay of Tigers, Mendes says, “This is a book about simple things; the calmness of fear, the vitality of death. In June 1997, I landed in Luanda with the intention of journeying to Quelimane by land. My purpose was the most noble of all—that is, I had no purpose in particular. These pages are the atlas with which to read my trek: the emotional map of a route whose locales bear people’s faces and where space and time are the coordinates that lie the most. Everyone warned me: The war is still going on there. Some of my travel companions died. There was no guarantee I would return.”

Mendes exposes the suffering of the indigenous population, the bulk of the casualties of war, dying from mine explosions or living with limb deficiencies. Angolan children are turned into auxiliary warriors, fighting to eat and live. This is an extraordinary, difficult, frightening book.

An Archaeology of Elmina: Africans and Europeans on the Gold Coast, 1400-1900 by Christopher R. Decorse (Smithsonian) examines a complex African settlement on the coast of present-day Ghana from the fifteenth through the nineteenth centuries, using the archaeological record, European narratives, and indigenous oral histories. Placing the site in broader context as the first European trade post in sub-Saharan Africa, Christopher R. DeCorse explores developments there in light of Portuguese, Dutch, and British expansion and illustrates remarkable cultural continuity in the midst of technological change.

This is an archaeological study, but documentary records, oral sources, and ethnographic data have been used to interpret the material record. Elmina is one of the best-illustrated and -described African settlements in sub-Saharan Africa. It is fortunate that many primary sources on Elmina and the Gold Coast have been republished and annotated in English.' Several scholars have synthesized Elmina's history and examined Elmina within the broader context of the Gold Coast.' Many archives also possess rich holdings of maps and plans. In particular, Ι was able to examine manuscripts relevant to Elmina at the British Public Record Office, Kew; the Rijksarchief, Amsterdam; the National Maritime Museum, London; the Furley Collection at the University of Ghana; and the National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. Ι also obtained selected material from a number of other archives including: Bibliotheek der Rijksuniversiteit, Leiden; Stichting Cultuurgeschiedenis van de Nederlanders Overzee (now part of the Rijksmuseum), Amsterdam; the Illustrated London News Picture Library; and the Algemeen Rijksarchief, The Hague. Α variety of documentary sources have been quoted at length in the text. These provide substantive information as well as colorful descriptions by European visitors to the coast. Irregularities in spelling and grammar have been retained as they appear in the original works or translations. Unless these confuse the meaning of the passage, they have not been identified in the text.

Despite the wealth of documentary sources, the records are by no means complete. Information on the lower Guinea coast, the area that extends from Liberia to Cameroon, during the Portuguese period is particularly limited. The records that do exist almost exclusively concern trade and navigational peculiarities. Much fuller accounts are available for later periods, but their value in historical reconstruction is variable. In some instances, as with the sixteenth-century writings of Duarte Pacheco Pereίra and Willem Bosman's later work, Α New and Accurate Description of the Coast of Guinea, the accounts are by Europeans who participated in the events described and played key roles in African-European relations.' Other narratives are by minor functionaries who plagiarized other writers and offer little new information (see, e.g., Feinberg 1979; Jones 1980 1986). The Asante War and the British military expedition of 1873-74 resulted in the publication of a mass of popular books and accounts in English; for the most part they are of limited direct relevance to Elmina, but some provide useful information (e.g., Allen 1874; Beaton 1873; Boyle 1874; Daily News Special Correspondent 1874; Hay 1874; Stanley 1874) Above all, many of the documents reflect European economic interests, the vast majority consisting of observations and reports of trade relations, often made rather dense by bureaucratic excess.

From an archaeological standpoint the documentary records are disappointing. There is a dearth of information on settlement organization and housing within the town. Descriptions are vague at best, and no detailed maps exist. No architectural plans of Elmina Castle itself are known until after the Dutch capture in 1637, or at least no earlier plans survive. The illustrations that do exist suggest a steady increase in the size of the settlement and, to some extent, the incorporation of European elements into house construction. Yet they are also indicative of the limitations of European source material in general: They are lacking in scale and perspective, concentrate on the European presence, and often present widely differing viewpoints . There are, for the most part, no detailed property records, deeds, or wills prior to the late nineteenth century. Notable exceptions are sources such as the second West India Company's dagregisters (daily journals), lijsten van overlijden (annual lists of the dead), and correspondence. These, as well as occasional references in other sources, briefly describe the homes of specific individuals. In the absence of more detailed maps, however, this information cannot be related to specific archaeological provenances. In any case, the few documents that record estate inventories or properties refer to only a minute portion of the population. The identities of the individuals who lived, worked, and were buried in the houses uncovered during archaeological work are unknown.

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