Conversing With Africa. Politics Of Change

The very title of Kenyan author Mukoma wa Ngugi’s book makes the case for dialogue. Conversing with Africa is a wide-ranging investigation of Africa’s dilemmas and his analysis is bleak; abject poverty, despotism, coups, ethnic cleansings all under the rubric of neo-colonialism, all structured under the debilitating conditions of the World Bank and the IMF continue to ravage the continent. Ngugi’s aim is polemical and he has approached his task in the spirit of Walter Rodney’s groundbreaking How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. His aim is to convince the reader of the imperative need for action; for Africans to become their own agents of change. Conversing with Africa is a plea for unity; Ngugi is proposing nothing less than a Pan-African solution to the ills of the continent and although his argument is stronger on passion than pragmatism, he could justifiably point to what pragmatism has produced.