Introduction

Introduction

This special issue of Dissent devotes itself entirely to Africa today. In the past three years the world has altered fundamentally, and virtually everywhere across Africa there is a dialectic of crisis and change at work. Old regimes and ideas are being contested, new political voices are being heard, novel social and economic realities are in the making. Unhappily, the immediate prospects don’t seem particularly bright; indeed, some are potentially devastating. A watchword among African intellectuals and informed observers nowadays is “Afro-pessimism.”

The Western press pays only modest attention to African developments (apart, of course, from the great drama of South Africa). However, a process is under way that draws on many ingredients at a time of rapid global transformation.

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