The Bright Continent Breaking Rules & Making Change in Modern Africa

Dayo Olopade

ISBN 10: 0547678312 / ISBN 13: 9780547678313

Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014

About this Item

The author inscribe and drew a small image on the title page of this volume. There is another inscription also included on the title page. There are 272 pages to this purple paper colored over board hard cover edition. The volume has a complete number line 10-1 and the year on the title page is the same as the copyright page. There numbers on the inside lower right corner of the front flap are 0314. The book is clean internally and externally and other than the writing mentioned above is without any other marks, highlighting or underlining. The dust jacket does show some wear at the folds at the corners of the flaps and at the spine ends. The dust wrapper is currently protected by a clear removable cover.

Seller Inventory # SpSi959

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Bright Continent Breaking Rules & Making Change in Modern Africa
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
• Publication Date: 2014
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0547678312
• ISBN 13: 9780547678313
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Condition: Near Fine
• Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good
• Signed: Inscribed by Author(s)
• Seller catalogs:
  • Cultural Phenomena

About this title

Synopsis

The path to progress in Africa lies in the surprising and innovative solutions Africans are finding for themselves

Africa is a continent on the move. It’s often hard to notice, though—the Western focus on governance and foreign aid obscures the individual dynamism and informal social adaptation driving the past decade of African development. Dayo Olopade set out across sub-Saharan Africa to find out how ordinary people are dealing with the challenges they face every day. She discovered an unexpected Africa: resilient, joyful, and innovative, a continent of DIY changemakers and impassioned community leaders.

Everywhere Olopade went, she witnessed the specific creativity born from African difficulty—a trait she began calling kanju. It’s embodied by bootstrapping innovators like Kenneth Nnebue, who turned his low-budget, straight-to-VHS movies into a multimillion-dollar film industry known as Nollywood. Or Soyapi Mumba, who helped transform cast-off American computers into touchscreen databases that allow hospitals across Malawi to process patients in seconds. Or Ushahidi, the Kenyan technology collective that crowdsources citizen activism and disaster relief.

The Bright Continent calls for a necessary shift in our thinking about Africa. Olopade shows us that the increasingly globalized challenges Africa faces can and must be addressed with the tools Africans are already using to solve these problems themselves. Africa’s ability to do more with less—to transform bad government and bad aid into an opportunity to innovate—is a clear ray of hope amidst the dire headlines and a powerful model for the rest of the world.

From the Back Cover

The path to progress in Africa lies in the surprising and innovative solutions Africans are finding for themselves

Africa is a continent on the move. It’s often hard to notice, though—the Western focus on governance and foreign aid obscures the individual dynamism and informal social adaptation driving the last decade of African development. Dayo Olopade set out across sub-Saharan Africa to find out how ordinary people are dealing with the challenges they face every day. She discovered an unexpected Africa: resilient, joyful, and innovative, a continent of DIY changemakers and impassioned community leaders.

Everywhere Olopade went, she witnessed the specific creativity born from African difficulty—a trait she began calling kanju. It’s embodied by bootstrapping innovators like Kenneth Nnebue, who turned his low-budget, straight-to-VHS movies into a multi-million-dollar film industry known as Nollywood. Or Soyapi Mumba, who helped transform cast-off American computers into touchscreen databases that allow hospitals across Malawi to process patients in seconds. Or Ushahidi, the Kenyan technology collective that crowdsources citizen activism and disaster relief.

The Bright Continent calls for a necessary shift in our thinking about Africa. Olopade shows us that the increasingly globalized challenges Africa faces can and must be addressed with the tools Africans are already using to solve these problems themselves. Africa’s ability to do more with less—to transform bad aid and bad government into an opportunity to innovate—is a clear ray of hope amid the dire headlines, and a powerful model for the rest of the world.