Browse  ▾ How to… ▾ Poetry Prize About the Press shopping_cart search Western Africa Western Africa Book List Sign up to be notified when new Western Africa titles come out. Name Email Sign up We will only use your email address to notify you of new titles in the subject area(s) you follow. We will never share your information with third parties. First Previous 1 2 Last SEE ALSO Africa | West Africa | Mauritania Benin Burkina Faso Cape Verde Cote d'Ivoire Gambia Ghana Guinea Guinea-Bissau Liberia Mali Mauritania Niger Nigeria Senegal Sierra Leone Togo Africa | Sahara Desert Central Africa Eastern Africa Northern Africa Southern Africa Western Africa Africa Antarctica Asia Europe North America South America Embodied Engineering Gendered Labor, Food Security, and Taste in Twentieth-Century Mali By Laura Ann Twagira Common narratives about development in Africa miss the critical technological work of women. Twagira’s study instead positions Malian women as rural engineers whose strategic planning and labor over the course of the twentieth century assured their food security. Village Work Development and Rural Statecraft in Twentieth-Century Ghana By Alice Wiemers This detailed and groundbreaking history of rural Ghanaian statecraft details the crucial importance that local village development systems have on regional and national scales. Embodied Engineering Gendered Labor, Food Security, and Taste in Twentieth-Century Mali By Laura Ann Twagira Common narratives about development in Africa miss the critical technological work of women. Twagira’s study instead positions Malian women as rural engineers whose strategic planning and labor over the course of the twentieth century assured their food security. Village Work Development and Rural Statecraft in Twentieth-Century Ghana By Alice Wiemers This detailed and groundbreaking history of rural Ghanaian statecraft details the crucial importance that local village development systems have on regional and national scales. Militarizing Marriage West African Soldiers’ Conjugal Traditions in Modern French Empire By Sarah J. Zimmerman By prioritizing women and conjugality in the historiography of African colonial soldiers, Militarizing Marriage historicizes how the subjugation of women was indispensable to military conquest and colonial rule across French Empire. Kwame Nkrumah Visions of Liberation By Jeffrey S. Ahlman This new biography of Kwame Nkrumah (1909–72), Ghana’s first president, demonstrates how his accomplishments extend well beyond his role in Ghanaian decolonization, state-building, and the promotion of pan-Africanism to include his broader anticolonialist work toward an independent, unified Africa. Militarizing Marriage West African Soldiers’ Conjugal Traditions in Modern French Empire By Sarah J. Zimmerman By prioritizing women and conjugality in the historiography of African colonial soldiers, Militarizing Marriage historicizes how the subjugation of women was indispensable to military conquest and colonial rule across French Empire. Finalist for the 2020 African Studies Association Book Prize · Cowinner of the 2020 Rosalyn Terborg-Penn Book Prize for outstanding original scholarship on gender and sexuality in the African diaspora, awarded by the Association for the Study of the Worldwide African Diaspora (ASWAD). Emergent Masculinities Gendered Power and Social Change in the Biafran Atlantic Age By Ndubueze L. Mbah Atlanticization—or interaction between regional processes and Atlantic forces such as the slave trade and Christianization—from 1750 to 1920 transformed gender into a primary mode of social differentiation in the Bight of Biafra. Mbah examines this process to fill a major gap in our understanding of gender’s role in precolonial Africa. Amílcar Cabral A Nationalist and Pan-Africanist Revolutionary By Peter Karibe Mendy Amílcar Cabral’s charismatic and visionary leadership, his pan-Africanist solidarity and internationalist commitment to “every just cause in the world,” remain relevant to contemporary struggles for emancipation and self-determination. This concise biography is an ideal introduction to his life and legacy. Market Encounters Consumer Cultures in Twentieth-Century Ghana By Bianca Murillo By emphasizing the centrality of human relationships to Ghana’s economic past, Murillo introduces a radical rethinking of consumption studies from an Africa-centered perspective. The result is a keen look at colonial capitalism in all of its intricacies, legacies, and contradictions, including its entanglement with gender and race. Making Money Life, Death, and Early Modern Trade on Africa’s Guinea Coast By Colleen E. Kriger A new era in world history began when Atlantic maritime trade among Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Americas opened up in the fifteenth century, setting the stage for massive economic and cultural change. In Making Money, Colleen Kriger examines the influence of the global trade on the Upper Guinea Coast two hundred years later—a place and time whose study, in her hands, imparts profound insights into Anglo-African commerce and its wider milieu.A A 2017 Choice Outstanding Academic Title Ken Saro-Wiwa By Roy Doron and Toyin Falola A penetrating, accessible portrait of the activist whose execution galvanized the world. Hanged by the Nigerian government on November 10, 1995, Ken Saro-Wiwa became a martyr for the Ogoni people and for human rights activists, as well as a symbol of modern Africans’ struggle against military dictatorship, corporate power, and environmental exploitation. Ellen Johnson Sirleaf By Pamela Scully In this concise biography, Scully shows us how the life of Nobel Peace Prize winner and two-time Liberian president Ellen Johnson Sirleaf speaks to many of the key themes of the twenty-first century. Among these are the growing power of women in the arenas of international politics and human rights; the ravaging civil wars of the post–Cold War era in which sexual violence is used as a weapon; and the challenges of transitional justice in building postconflict societies. Black Skin, White Coats Nigerian Psychiatrists, Decolonization, and the Globalization of Psychiatry By Matthew M. Heaton Black Skin, White Coats is a history of psychiatry in Nigeria from the 1950s to the 1980s. Working in the contexts of decolonization and anticolonial nationalism, Nigerian psychiatrists sought to replace racist colonial psychiatric theories about the psychological inferiority of Africans with a universal and egalitarian model focusing on broad psychological similarities across cultural and racial boundaries. Particular emphasis is placed on Dr. Finalist for the 2014 Melville J. Herskovits Award from the African Studies Association. The Power to Name A History of Anonymity in Colonial West Africa By Stephanie Newell Between the 1880s and the 1940s, the region known as British West Africa became a dynamic zone of literary creativity and textual experimentation. African-owned newspapers offered local writers numerous opportunities to contribute material for publication, and editors repeatedly defined the press as a vehicle to host public debates rather than simply as an organ to disseminate news or editorial ideology. 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