African Studies Book List · 
Ohio University Press’s African Studies publishing program includes regional surveys, works of distinguished scholarship that contribute to academic debates, and multiauthor collections on key topics. Groundbreaking series such as Eastern African Studies, Western African Studies, Research in International Studies (RIS) Africa, RIS Global and Comparative Studies, and the Ohio University Press Series in Ecology and History have redefined the study of Africa. The New African Histories series promotes continued research on the lived experience of Africans while pushing the boundaries of social history in exciting new directions. A forthcoming series, Africa in World History, will produce accessibly written books by African specialists who speak to current images of Africa in the popular culture, drawing attention to the parallels in human experience in Africa and other parts of the world.
Multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary, our list promotes the work of both first-time authors and established scholars. Topics include the nature of the colonial state, social history and social life, religion and politics, conflict and reconstruction, environmental history, poverty, public health, and development.
Many books on our African Studies list are available in paperback editions.
Featured Titles
After Tears
By Niq MhlongoBafana Kuzwayo is a young man with a weight on his shoulders. After flunking his law studies at the University of Cape Town, he returns home to Soweto, where he must decide how to break the news to his family.…
Christianity and Public Culture in Africa
Edited by Harri EnglundChristianity and Public Culture in Africa takes readers beyond familiar images of religious politicians and populations steeped in spirituality. It shows how critical reason and Christian convictions have combined in surprising ways as African Christians confront issues such as national constitutions, gender relations, and the continuing struggle with HIV/AIDS.…
We Are All Zimbabweans Now
By James KilgoreWe Are All Zimbabweans Now is a political thriller set in Zimbabwe in the hopeful, early days of Robert Mugabe’s rise to power in the late 1980s. When Ben Dabney, a Wisconsin graduate student, arrives in the country, he is enamored with Mugabe and the promises of his government’s model of racial reconciliation.…
Welcome to Our Hillbrow
A Novel of Postapartheid South Africa
By Phaswane MpeWelcome to Our Hillbrow is an exhilarating and disturbing ride through the chaotic and hyper-real zone of Hillbrow—microcosm of all that is contradictory, alluring, and painful in the postapartheid South African psyche.…
African Studies titles sorted by release date (or by book title):
Unhappy Valley
Conflict in Kenya & Africa
By Bruce Berman and John LonsdaleThis long-awaited book is a considerable revision in the understanding of the history of colonial Kenya and, more widely, colonialism in Africa. There is a substantial amount of new work and this is interlocked with shared areas of concern that the authors have been exploring since 1976.…
The Political Economy of Health in Africa
Edited by Toyin Falola and Dennis ItyavyarThis book examines the major phases in the history of health services in Africa and treats health as an integral aspect of the deepening crisis in Africa’s underdevelopment. One important thesis is that Western delivery systems have made health care less accessible for most people.…
Changing Uganda
Dilemmas of Structural Adjustment
Edited by Hölger Bernt Hansen and Michael TwaddleYoweri Museveni battled to power in 1986. His government has impressed many observers as Uganda's most innovative since it gained independence from Britain in 1962. The Economist recommended it as a model for other African states struggling to develop their resources in the best interests of their peoples.…
Faces in the Revolution
The Psychological Effects of Violence on Township Youth in South Africa
By Gill StrakerOne of South Africa’s most serious problems is the large number of youths in the black townships who have been exposed to an incredible depth and complexity of trauma. Not only have they lived through severe poverty, the deterioration of family and social structures, and an inferior education system, but they have also been involved in catastrophic levels of violence, both as victims and as perpetrators.…
The Krobo People of Ghana to 1892
A Political and Social History
By Louis E. WilsonThis book presents a broad analytical framework for the history of southeastern Ghana within the context of a representative study of one of the country’s most important political and economic forces.…
Learning from Robben Island
Govan Mbeki's Prison Writings
By Govan Mbeki“South Africa has jailed so many gifted men and women that there already exists a sizeable body of prison writing…The essays by Govan Mbeki which comprise this book add to this distinguished list. Yet they differ in important respects from all others: they were written, circulated and preserved in prison.…
Zanzibar under Colonial Rule
Edited by Abdul Sheriff and Ed FergusonZanzibar stands at the center of the Indian Ocean system’s involvement in the history of Eastern Africa. This book follows on from the period covered in Abdul Sheriff’s acclaimed Slaves, Spices and Ivory in Zanzibar.…
Cannabis, Alcohol, and the South African Student
Adolescent Drug Use, 1974-1985
By Brian M. du ToitDu Toit examines the results of two surveys which he made a decade apart among high school students of Black, Indian, White, and Colored backgrounds. The initial survey showed some acceptance of the use of these substances among a small proportion of high school students but a high degree of intolerance of such use by the majority.…
Penetration & Protest in Tanzania
Impact of World Economy on the Pare, 1860–1960
By Isaria N. KimamboThe originality of this study of rural transformation stems from the way in which Professor Kimambo has used the oral tradition to reveal the history of the impact of the world economy in northeastern Tanzania.…
Dance Civet Cat
Tonga Children and Labour in the Zambezi Valley
By Pamela ReynoldsIn this, the first comprehensive study of the Tonga people in Zimbabwe, Pamela Reynolds focuses on children’s work in a subsistence agricultural system, assessing how much work they do, the value of their work to their families and how it both limits their opportunities and fosters their personal growth and knowledge.…
Native Life in South Africa
Before and Since the European War and the Boer Rebellion
By Sol T. PlaatjeFirst published in 1916 and one of South Africa's great political books, Native Life in South Africa was first and foremost a response to the Native's Land Act of 1913, and was written by one of the most gifted and influential writers and journalists of his generation.…
The Western Bahr Al Ghazal under British Rule, 1898–1956
By Ahmad Alawad SikaingaWestern Bahr al-Ghazal is perhaps one of the least known places in Africa. Yet this remote part of the Republic of Sudan can be regarded as a historical barometer, registering major developments in the history of the Nile valley.…
Democracy in Botswana
The Proceedings of a Symposium held in Gaborone, 1–5 August 1988
Edited by John D. Holm and Patrick P. MolutsiThis book examines the character of Botswana’s democracy and provides an intense debate on the quality of popular control achieved. Topics covered include Botswana’s historical experience with democracy, public opinion, political rights, the impact of classes, groups and mass media on government policy, and grass–roots politics.…
In the Heart of the Hausa States
By Paul StaudingerEdited by Johanna E. Moody
Consequent upon the Berlin West Africa Conference (1884-1885), the Africanische Gesellschaft in Deutschland launched the Niger-Benue expedition to investigate possible riverine communications throughout the Niger-Benue river system.…
Rendering Things Visible
Essays on South African Literary Culture
By Martin TrumpMuch recent critical practice, sharpened by an engagement with theory, has questioned conventional notions about literature. There has been a tendency to democratize our understanding of literature, so as to include a wide range of cultural practices that might formerly have been excluded from literary-critical concern.…
Mafeking Diary
A Black Man's View of a White Man's War
By Sol T. PlaatjeEdited by John Comaroff
“Sol Plaatje's Mafeking Diary is a document of enduring importance and fascination. The product of a young black South African court interpreter, just turned 23 years old when he started writing, it opens an entirely new vista on the famous Siege of Mafeking.…
Second Economy in Tanzania
By T. L. Maliyamkono and Mboya S. D. BagachwaEvery country has its second, underground, unofficial, irregular or parallel economy. By their nature they are hidden and defy accurate and formal measurement. They provoke conceptual and definitional arguments among analysts.…
Succession to High Office in Botswana
Three Case Studies
Edited by Jack ParsonThis book examines the process through which the mantle of leadership passed from one leader to another in Botswana. It concerns the succession to high office in Botswana over the course of more than half a century from the colonial time to the present.…
Control & Crisis in Colonial Kenya
The Dialectic of Domination
By Bruce BermanThis history of the political economy of Kenya is the first full length study of the development of the colonial state in Africa.Professor Berman argues that the colonial state was shaped by the contradictions between maintaining effective political control with limited coercive force and ensuring the profitable articulation of metropolitan and settler capitalism with African societies.…
The Mau Mau War in Perspective
By Frank FurediThe book breaks new ground in following the story of the participants of the rural movement during the decade after the defeat of the Mau Mau. New archival sources and interviews provide exciting material on the mechanics of the sociology of decolonization and on the containment of rural radicalism in Kenya.…
