Africa Altered States, Ordinary Miracles

Richard Dowden

Portobello Books 

After a lifetime’s close observation of the continent, one of the world’s finest Africa correspondents has penned a landmark book on life and death in modern Africa. In captivating prose, Dowden spins tales of cults and commerce in Senegal and traditional spirituality in Sierra Leone; analyzes the impact of oil and the internet on Nigeria and aid on Sudan; and examines what has gone so badly wrong in Zimbabwe, Rwanda, Burundi, and the Congo. From the individual stories of failure and success comes a surprising portrait of a new Africa emerging—an Africa that, Dowden argues, can only be developed by its own people. Dowden’s master work is an attempt to explain why Africa is the way it is and calls for a re-examination of the perception of Africa as “the dark continent.” He reveals it as a place of inspiration and tremendous humanity.

 

Critique du Spectator

 One of his great strengths as a reporter is an ability to keep an open mind and to continue learning from the evidence before his eyes. Early in his career he took a principled vow never to use the word ‘chaos’ about Africa and always to search for a rational explanation. On hearing this, a Nigerian newspaper editor informed him that in Nigeria this search would be a waste of time. The appropriate word was always ‘chaos’. Similarly, Dowden has no problem with tribalism as a concept. It is in fact impossible to understand African politics or current events in Zimbabwe or the Congo without a detailed knowledge of a particular country’s tribal structure. These people are not beating, killing and raping each other over rival football teams, whatever the editors of the Compact Oxford English Dictionary may want us to think. In one page Dowden makes more sense of the tragic and mysterious situation in Darfur than one will hear in three years of television news reporting. He does this by tracing tribal links and alliances across Sudan’s borders with Uganda and Chad.

 

The Social Affairs Unit

How interesting is Africa?
At The Times, the Independent and the Economist, and now at the Royal African Society, Dowden has been the voice of Africa for thirty years. There is the occasional hint in this book that his editors were not always thrilled to see him bowling down the newsroom with yet another reason to pack a bag and visit his bailiwick. One can imagine the scene. Another small war, another coup? Who needs it? Oh alright – if it’s a real genocide, or lots of people really are threatened with starvation, maybe the reader will insist we cover it.

But are we, the readers, very interested? It’s obvious that Africa suffers and is in lots of ways ghastly. Isn’t the unbidden thought worse than that? Isn’t Africa mostly third-rate? Isn’t it really quite a serious problem that Africa nurtures so little of note? Dowden tells us that 70 percent of African intellectual aren’t there. No wonder it is the only continent on earth whose animals command more attention than its humans. Most people lose interest in Africa’s frequent accidents because its normal – and even its best – have not much intrigued them anyway. World Music and a few novels don’t cut it.

This is a hard book to read. Dowden is unsparing. Several hundred of his 500-odd pages are devoted to blow-by-blow accounts of the dozens of bloody struggles for power he has witnessed in Africa, let alone the more or less unsavoury dealings which have passed for politics there. Always vivid and well-paced and serious, this is matchless writing which it is nonetheless sometimes a chore to read. Dowden is at pains to tell us how various Africa is – more so than Europe. But its 50-odd countries and three-quarters of a billion inhabitants seem to put on much the same sad parade.