Africa Must Be Modern: A Manifesto

Africa must be modern. Let me say it again: Africa must be modern. And it must be modern NOW; not tomorrow; not in the near future; not in the far future.... Put simply, Africa must embrace individualism as a principle of social ordering; make reason central in its relation to, activity upon, understanding of, and production of knowledge about the world, both physical and social, that it inhabits; and adopt progress as its motto in all things. The position just stated is rarely encountered in discourse about, in and on the continent or its Diaspora. On the contrary, no thanks to the militancy and stridency of the nativists, those who wish to celebrate African genius at adapting the wisdom of others and, by so doing, domesticate modernity for the benefit of Africa, Africans, and their life and thought, are practically shouted to silence or, at best, limited to furtive expressions of their preference.From the introduction

• Africa's Freedom Railway: How a Chinese Development Project Changed Lives and Livelihoods in Tanzania
• King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa
• A Nervous State: Violence, Remedies, and Reverie in Colonial Congo
• A Different Shade of Colonialism: Egypt, Great Britain, and the Mastery of the Sudan
• Domesticating the World (California World History Library)
• Living with Nkrumahism: Nation, State, and Pan-Africanism in Ghana (New African Histories)
• Taking Sides: Clashing Views in Educational Psychology
• How Colonialism Preempted Modernity in Africa
• Power in Africa: An Essay in Political Interpretation
• Devil on the Cross (Penguin African Writers Series)