Mohamed Saliou Camara - Böcker

The most significant thing about Guinea is its potential. It is strategically located in West Africa, with a well-educated and hardworking population, and endowed with considerable natural resources, indeed, enough to make it reasonably affluent if properly utilized. But this potential has never really been tapped, due mainly to bad politics with military men following a charismatic politician, until finally democracy has been achieved. So, more than half-a-century after achieving independence, the question remains unanswered: which way will Guinea turn? This fifth edition of Historical Dictionary of Guinea covers the full scope of Guinea’s history. This is done through a chronology, an introductory essay, appendixes, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 800 cross-referenced entries on key events, leaders, governmental, international, religious, and other private organizations, policies, political movements and parties, economic elements and many other areas that have shaped the country’s trajectory. This book is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about Guinea.

Political History of Guinea since World War Two provides an in-depth study of the political evolution of Guinea from World War Two to the present. Based on primary-source information, it examines with rare depth and breadth the eventful history of this nation-state, whose trajectory has impacted in no small ways Francophone Africa and the rest of the continent. Interviews with some of the most knowledgeable and most credible actors and/or witnesses of Guinea’s political history and archival research, including the papers of key individuals never opened to the public before, constitute the foundation of this work. The author’s personal and professional experience further strengthens the work. As a native Guinean, a historian, and a journalist imbued with the political ideology of the PDG regime, the author was also a close and alert witness of the political transformation of this country. Hence, the book offers an incisive analysis of domestic politics and policy making under the five successive regimes that have governed Guinea since independence in 1958. It also offers an equally incisive analysis of the country’s foreign relations within international frameworks such as the Organization of African Unity, the United Nations, the Nonalignment Movement, the Economic Community of West African States, the Mano River Union, the Organization of the Islamic Conference, and so on. This ground-breaking work is perfectly suited for courses in areas such as history, political science, African studies, decolonization studies, Third World studies, and nationalism studies.

This book is a study of the challenges facing the Mano River Union (MRU) countries of Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea, and Côte d’Ivoire, with respect to health security and human security. The study is conducted against the backdrop of the 2014-2016 Ebola outbreak in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone, and in conjunction with the impact on human security of the civil wars that engulfed Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Côte d’Ivoire in recent decades. The author explores the state of public health and national health systems across the sub-region with a view to identifying the underlying institutional and societal challenges facing each nation-state, as well as the potential for enhancing national health systems and creating an integrated regional system of health security. Furthermore, the author examines the challenges facing the MRU countries in the broader context of human security which encompasses physical and mental health; food security; environmental security; political security including law and order; and community security, such as the protection and empowerment of vulnerable segments of the population. The author concludes by recommending deeper regional integration, supranational governance and sovereign collective self-reliance within the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) as the most viable strategic approach to the pervasive health and human security challenges in West Africa.

Governance, security, and development are three critical components of a dialectical nexus that is both dominant and determinant for any objective and fruitful quest for the understanding of the trajectory of a country, a region or, in the case of Africa, a continent from a colonial past to a neocolonial and meta-colonial present, and toward a future of strategic optimal independence and self-reliance. That colonial past and the ensuing neocolonial and meta-colonial present have made these critical components and the dialectical nexus that they form particularly challenging for the African continent. For this reason, Issues of Governance, Security and Development in Contemporary Africa offers an in-depth, interdisciplinary analysis of the challenges that contemporary Africa faces within these critical areas, as well as the resources and prospects that the continent possesses and can leverage to overcome the said challenges. Using case studies involving a range of countries across the continent, Mohamed Saliou Camara, Alem Hailu, and Sabella O. Abidde argue that Africa needs to decolonize the terms of reference that guide its nation-building, statecraft, and national development agenda in ways that will facilitate the establishment of viable systems of governance and security, and the promotion of genuine development.