Africa: Development Challenges and Possibilities by Amadu Jacky Kaba (review)

Africa: Development, Challenges and Possibilities is a thought-provoking work that draws on rich scholarship and extensive empirical research. Amadu Jacky Kaba, an associate professor of sociology at Seton Hall University, examines the complex and dynamic nature of the African continent, offering hope and realistic options for change and improvement. The book provides an illuminating window on Africa’s development paradoxes and examples of real progress on the ground, such as increasing life expectancy, decreasing infant mortality rates, and increasing gross domestic products.

The book’s eight chapters are divided into three sections that deal with population growth, environment, and the challenge to food production; the impact of Islam and Christianity in Africa; the role of the African diaspora; and the significance of the African Union in Africa’s development. The first section, which includes two chapters, focuses on the determinants of development in Africa. Chapter 1, which presents an overview of Africa’s development paradoxes, highlights the various accomplishments of African countries in the past two decades. Chapter 2 examines the impact of Africa’s massive post–World War II population growth on food production in the continent, especially as it relates to increasing environmental challenges. This chapter also provides an overview of Africa’s demography, showing that it is the youngest region/continent in the world.

Religion holds a very special place in Africa, and the second section, which consists of two chapters, examines the impact of Islam and Christianity in Africa. Kaba attributes the declining influence of Islam in Africa primarily to the low priority placed on the study of Islamic education in African colleges and universities. He lists four additional factors responsible for the declining influence of Islam: a) colonization of Africa by European powers; b) the relatively small numbers and proportions of Arabic speakers in the vast majority of African nations; c) the negative implications of connecting Islamic fundamentalism/Al Qaeda to Arabs and Islam; and d) the humiliation, abuse, and severe punishment of black Africans in Arab majority societies.

The third section consists of three chapters that focus on Africa’s diaspora and development in the past six centuries. Chapter 5 presents a diagnosis of Africa’s post-independence brain drain. It evaluates the causes of the brain drain and the benefits Africans have accrued through remittances and brain circulation and makes recommendations about how to effectively deal with this phenomenon. Chapter 6 examines African immigrants in post–African independence America. It highlights the paradox that although Nigerian immigrants are the most educated groups in Africa, they earned substantially less in both median household and family incomes than the national average and were among the poorest groups in the country. Chapter 7 claims that people of black African descent resist racial revenge against people of other racial groups. Kaba traces the legacy of interracial tolerance to the slave trade era, when millions of black Africans were transported to be enslaved through the Indian Ocean, trans-Atlantic, trans-Saharan, and the Red Sea slave trades. Kaba argues that people of black African descent resist racial revenge because they choose to look at the positive implications resulting from this experience, including the inheritance of fertile lands across the planet, wealth accumulation, and the election of a black African man as the most powerful leader of the world in the beginning of the twenty-first century.

The concluding chapter presents a framework for managing Africa’s development in the twenty-first century. It asserts that the African Union should be empowered to become a stronger federal union to allow the members to reach their full potential. The chapter outlines thirteen strategic goals for systemically improving the lives of people on the continent, including building a continent-wide transport system, focusing on the pandemic of HIV/AIDS, investing in education (especially that of women), reducing infant mortality rates, investing in landlocked African states, establishing a federal university of Africa, incorporating the study of French and English in the university system, creating a single currency...