This course focuses on contemporary issues in African Politics. Central to the discourse is how Africa can change its future. Students are encouraged to look outside the assumptions of Africa as problematic and examine the means by which African states are working to shed colonial legacies and how therefore, conceptual frameworks that define and describe Africa are challenged.

The following themes will be addressed: Post Apartheid South Africa, its politics, economics and foreign policy; Structural Adjustment; the African Union; HIV/Aids in Africa and the Caribbean; Zimbabwe Land Reform; Religious Fundamentalism and African language in Development. They will be approached conceptually in terms of the uses and misuses of tradition and Africa’s experience of modernity as an alternative to the pedantry of adopting western economics and politics in response to Africa’s problems.