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African Visionaries
In over forty portraits, African writers present extraordinary people from their continent: portraits of the women and men whom they admire, people who have changed and enriched life in Africa. The portraits include inventor, founders of universities, resistance fighters, musicians, environmental activists or writers. African Visionaries is a multi-faceted book, seen through African eyes, on the most impactful people of Africa.
Some of the writers contributing to the collection are: Helon Habila, Virginia Phiri, Ellen Banda-Aaku, Véronique Tadjo, Tendai Huchu, Solomon Tsehaye, Patrice Nganang and Sami Tchak.
₵130.00African Visionaries
₵130.00 -
S.D. Dombo: A Biography of An Iconic Ghanaian Statesman (Hardcover)
One of the ways to know about the history and foundations of a society is to read about how her pioneers lived their lives and chartered courses that have defined various aspects of the nation’s life as well as the motivations that inspired their actions and the philosophies that underpinned their conduct.
Ghana is a nation with a rich history of men and women whose contributions have resulted in her success story as a beacon in the comity of nations.
This book gives account of the life and works of one of the notable founders of the West African country in the centre of the world. It is a story of courage, fortitude and foresight exhibited by a real gem of a leader — Chief Simon Diedong Dombo: a traditional ruler, an educationist, a politician and a revered statesman.
₵100.00 -
Ogyakrom: The Missing Pages of June 4th (Fireman Series) – Hardback
Kwesi Yankah is currently the Minister of State for Tertiary Education in Ghana. Until April 2017, he was Vice Chancellor of Central University, Ghana, and was previously Professor of Linguistics and Pro-Vice Chancellor at the University of Ghana. Yankah, an inimitable satirist, is a proud product of Winneba Secondary School, University of Ghana and Indiana University, USA, where he did his doctorate. Well known in literary and academic circles, Professor Yankah has been a Public Intellectual since the late 1970s when, at 27, he started an anonymous column in The Catholic Standard newspaper, under the pseudonym Abonsam Fireman. The credit for the column, in a suppressive political environment, was often mistakenly given to the two great luminaries PAV Ansah and Adu Boahen.
Later in 1986, when Yankah returned from doctoral work at Indiana University, he introduced another weekly column, Woes of the Kwatriot, this time in The Mirror which he sustained for a period of ten years. In 1996, the Ghana Journalists Association honoured him for ‘the longest running column in the history of Ghanaian journalism.’ His writings, both literary and academic, have won for Yankah various awards including the WEB Du Bois Award (GAW), the Zora Hurston Award (GAW), the Ghana Book Development Award (GBDC) and the Gold Book Award given by the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences.
The present volume represents landmarks within 22 months of Yankah’s weekly column in The Catholic Standard, from January 1979 to March 1980. It is inspired by topical issues in two military regimes (General F Akuffo’s SMC 2, Rawlings’ June 4th Revolution) and one civilian government (Hilla Limann’s PNP). This compilation altogether allows a veiled peep into the most turbulent period in Ghana’s political history, Rawlings’ June 4th Revolution, including preceding events and the aftermath of the Revolution. In the words of Dr Anthony Bonnah Koomson, Editor of The Catholic Standard at the time of Yankah’s celebrated column: “The book captures a momentous era in Ghana’s immediate political history, reminiscences of which the author has sough to recreate and preserve with phenomenal linguistic skill. It presents, through satire, an accurate heartbeat of a people under intense political paralysis.”
This book makes compelling, even if hilarious, reading on Ghana’s enigmatic June 4th Revolution.
₵100.00 -
Ogyakrom: The Missing Pages of June 4th (Fireman Series) – Paperback
Kwesi Yankah is currently the Minister of State for Tertiary Education in Ghana. Until April 2017, he was Vice Chancellor of Central University, Ghana, and was previously Professor of Linguistics and Pro-Vice Chancellor at the University of Ghana. Yankah, an inimitable satirist, is a proud product of Winneba Secondary School, University of Ghana and Indiana University, USA, where he did his doctorate. Well known in literary and academic circles, Professor Yankah has been a Public Intellectual since the late 1970s when, at 27, he started an anonymous column in The Catholic Standard newspaper, under the pseudonym Abonsam Fireman. The credit for the column, in a suppressive political environment, was often mistakenly given to the two great luminaries PAV Ansah and Adu Boahen.
Later in 1986, when Yankah returned from doctoral work at Indiana University, he introduced another weekly column, Woes of the Kwatriot, this time in The Mirror which he sustained for a period of ten years. In 1996, the Ghana Journalists Association honoured him for ‘the longest running column in the history of Ghanaian journalism.’ His writings, both literary and academic, have won for Yankah various awards including the WEB Du Bois Award (GAW), the Zora Hurston Award (GAW), the Ghana Book Development Award (GBDC) and the Gold Book Award given by the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences.
The present volume represents landmarks within 22 months of Yankah’s weekly column in The Catholic Standard, from January 1979 to March 1980. It is inspired by topical issues in two military regimes (General F Akuffo’s SMC 2, Rawlings’ June 4th Revolution) and one civilian government (Hilla Limann’s PNP). This compilation altogether allows a veiled peep into the most turbulent period in Ghana’s political history, Rawlings’ June 4th Revolution, including preceding events and the aftermath of the Revolution. In the words of Dr Anthony Bonnah Koomson, Editor of The Catholic Standard at the time of Yankah’s celebrated column: “The book captures a momentous era in Ghana’s immediate political history, reminiscences of which the author has sough to recreate and preserve with phenomenal linguistic skill. It presents, through satire, an accurate heartbeat of a people under intense political paralysis.”
This book makes compelling, even if hilarious, reading on Ghana’s enigmatic June 4th Revolution.
₵90.00 -
African Traditional Leadership
In this book, Emeritus Professor Jacob U. Gordon has brought together both historical and current literature in traditional African leadership to focus on critical issues of leadership and governance in Africa. The book sets out to provide students of African leadership and development, educators, politicians, traditional leaders and practitioners with a toolbox for understanding the changing role of traditional rulers/chiefs and its future in African life.
It examples leadership dynamics of past African leaders such as Abu Bakr II (14th century), Chaka Zulu, Queen Hatshepsut, Hannibal of Carthage, Makeda the Queen of Sheba, King Mansa Musa, Haile Selassie and Yaa Asantewaa.
It is the author’s hope that this book will help the reader to better understand the complexities of traditional leadership in Africa and key considerations; to appreciate the values of traditional African leadership; and to develop a better appreciation of the importance of good leadership and governance in a global and competitive world that yearns for sustainable peace and security.
₵40.00 -
The Trial of J.J. Rawlings: Echoes of the 31st December Revolution (2nd Edition)
The Trial of JJ Rawlings narrates the extraordinary circumstances under which a young military officer Flt Lt JJ Rawlings, later to become the longest serving Head of State of Ghana, shot into the limelight to change the course of Ghana’s history and political development.The first edition of the book, originally published in 1986, completely sold out within a year, making this second edition very welcome in response to public request.
This volume is a valuable contribution to our understanding of those ineluctable forces that have changed the contours of our society. Surely, the story of JJ, well told in this volume, cannot fail to grip and hold the reader’s most concentrated attention. – Prof F.A. Botchwey, PhD
₵135.00 -
The Mind of Africa
The Mind of Africa, written while the author was A Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, was a fruit of that enlarged perspective. After several years, he visited Ghana in 1962. There Kwame Nkrumah, then President of Ghana, successfully persuaded him to return to teach at the University of Ghana, Legon and he subsequently resigned from All Souls. In 1968, he went to the United States as a visiting professor. This was followed by invitations to teach at various academic institutions there, including Berkeley and Stanford. He subsequently settled in California, where he continued to teach and research philosophy in the University of California at Santa Cruz until his retirement.
The Mind of Africa appeared at a time when a number of African countries were obtaining, or fighting for, their political freedom from their colonial rulers; and becoming independent nations expecting to build new societies in accordance with their own visions and conceptions, though not necessarily jettisoning all the features of their colonial heritage. Building new societies requires appropriate ideologies and philosophies fashioned within the crucible of their cultural and historical experiences. Thus, the relation between ideology and society is taken up at the very outset of the book… The Mind of Africa is important for Africa’s future and identity.
₵70.00The Mind of Africa
₵70.00 -
It Takes A Woman: A Life Shaped by Heritage, Leadership and the Women Who Defined Hope
It Takes a Woman retraces the early life of Agyeman‐Rawlings who rose to prominence as the First Lady of the Republic of Ghana (1982-2000). She redefined the privilege of serving a nation, and sought every platform to champion the causes of underserved citizenry and women. While her husband, former President Jerry John Rawlings, embarked on a relentless pursuit of transforming Ghana into a model of African democracy, Mrs. Agyeman-Rawlings founded the 31st December Women’s Movement (the 31st DWM), an organisation which played a pivotal role in the empowerment of women, and in addressing issues of systemic gender inequality, not only in Ghana but across the African region.
Born in an era when women were overtly marginalised, Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings’ strong relationship with her father, mother and family elders formed the core of much of her formative years. Fortified by her unique family history, she was raised to never accept the notion that “there were some things she could not do, simply because she was a woman.”
The narrative captures the family history of a spirited little girl, and as she walks us through the refreshingly detailed scenes from her childhood, we are transported to a hopeful and quintessential Ghana, where a sense of national pride resounded powerfully at the time of independence. But as she recalls Ghana’s struggles post-independence, we are also confronted face to face with her juxtaposed emotions of elation and frustration, hurt and joy, certainty and dread. She was not to know that her personal life being upended early one morning in 1979 would also become a turning point in the nation’s history and would thrust her into the glare of international publicity.
It Takes a Woman, written with unflinching candour, is an absorbing portrait of a life devoted to public service and shaped by heritage. Above all, it is an account of resilience. The voices of the women who stood tall will forever inspire Agyeman-Rawlings to stand for many more whose voices may not be loud enough to stand on their own.
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Dark Days in Ghana
Kwame Nkrumah, foremost exponent of African unity and socialism, never saw Ghana in isolation from the rest of Africa or from the world revolutionary struggle.
In Dark Days in Ghana, he exposed the true nature of the military-police dictatorship that was established after the overthrow of Ghana’s Constitutional Government on 24th February 1966, setting the event in the context of the wider continental and world situation.
Dark Days in Ghana demolishes the “big lie” that Ghana had needed to be rescued from “economic chaos”. Nkrumah recounts the systematic sell-out of Ghana’s assets to neo-colonialist interests by the military-police junta, and the subsequent reduction of Ghana from democratic statehood to the humiliating position of neo-colony.
Since this book was first published, Ghana has had several governments − military and civilian. None have succeeded in restoring Ghana to the position it occupied in Africa and the world during Nkrumah’s stewardship.
This and other works of Nkrumah demonstrate the accuracy of Nkrumah’s political and philosophical vision, and the clarity of his understanding of the problems and possibilities for all those resisting oppression and exploitation throughout the world, and for the continuing development of continental African unity.
₵120.00Dark Days in Ghana
₵120.00 -
Africa Writes Back: The African Writers Series & the Launch of African Literature
June 17, 2008, is the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart by Heinemann. This publication provided the impetus for the foundation of the African Writers Series in 1962 with Chinua Achebe as the editorial adviser. This narrative, drawing liberally on the correspondence with the authors, concentrates on the adventurous first twenty-five years.
Africa Writes Back: The African Writer’s Series & the Launch of African Literature captures the energy of literary publishing in a new and undefined field. Portraits of the leading characters and the many consultants and readers providing reports and advice to new and established writers make Africa Writes Back a stand-out book. James Currey’s voice and insights are an added bonus.
₵65.00 -
St. Augustine’s College: Conquering With Perseverance – Our Past, Our Present And Our Future
The 724-page book is the first-ever reference book by any college in Ghana. It serves as both a history book on everything one needs to know about the St. Augustine’s College and serves as both an encyclopaedia as well as almanac that compiles in detail, every single one of the over 400 parishes, out-stations and individuals that contributed towards the establishment of the College. It also traces the history of the Gold Coast Catholic as the root of Catholic Education, contribution of the Catholic Church to Ghana’s Education Sector, the establishment of St. Augustine’s College initially as a Teacher Training College in Amisano and subsequent construction and transfer of the College to Cape Coast with a Secondary Department. In all the narration, the authors bring out the undercurrents that led to the clamour of the Gold Coast Catholic faithful to have their own Secondary School and the frustrations that the Catholic Church hierarchy had to endure to have the College established.
The book gives a background to the naming of the College after the foremost Christian Theologian of African descent and how that dove-tailed into the philosophy, unique identity and character of the College’s products. Detailed highlights are given on major roles played by the Society of African Missions and the Congregation of Holy Cross in the holistic development of the College’s students. The College’s scholarship, excellence in sports and role as a citadel of the arts are well explained in the book with an impressive roll-call of outstanding alumni across various sectors as an emphasis to the role of the College within the context of national development. The very essence of campus life, management and curriculum is brought to the fore through reminiscence by APSUnians across its nine decades of existence. The various narrations are interlaced with interviews, discussions with College Management, academic staff and alumni dating as far back as the 1950s.
The book also does a comprehensive listing of every college alumnus from 1933 when the very first graduates left college till 2017 by their programmes offered and provides 65 coloured pages of very historic privileged pictures some dating as far back as 1930s. The role of the past students’ union (APSU) as one of the most critical stakeholders in the development of the College is clearly established all through the book which closes with prospects on the establishment of an endowment fund to secure the gains made over the decades.
Whether an APSUnian, Augusco parent, Catholic faithful, a historian or researcher, one will require a copy of this historic document to fully appreciate the work of the missionaries in the development of education in Ghana, role of the Catholic Church in the establishment of schools in Ghana among others.
The book is printed on quality paper and stitched hard-bound with dust jacket.
₵130.00 -
Elmina, ‘The Little Europe’: European Impact and Cultural Resilience (Hardcover)
This is a brief introduction to the history of Elmina, its castle, the people, and their traditions. It outlines the town’s 500-year relations with Europeans, highlighting the transformations that have developed out of these interactions. Written by one of the top historians of Ghana and a leading scholar of the African diaspora, the book is based on original archival information and orally-derived sources. It is also richly informed by the writer’s own personal knowledge as a Nyampa Safohen and citizen of Elmina. Despite the tremendous changes engendered by the European contact, Elmina’s historical development demonstrates an amazing degree of cultural continuity and resilience in its political institutions, social organization, economic systems and worldview.
₵70.00 -
The Ewe People: A Study of the Ewe People in German Togo
The Ewe of Ghana, Togo and Benin have been one of the most documented ethnic groups in West Africa, given their encounters with the German, French and British colonial administrations. In 1906, Jakob Spieth, a German Bremen Missionary, published Die Ewe-Stamme. Die Ewe-Stamme is one of the most comprehensive treatises on the history, religion, economic life, traditional social structure, and, indeed, the entire spectrum of everyday life of the Ewe. Published over 100 years ago the book had limited circulation and became increasingly rare to the extent that it almost became a deified piece of work and source of classified knowledge. Additionally, Die Ewe-Stamme was published in German and old non-standard and colloquial Ewe languages. It is hoped this translation of Die Ewe-Stamme into English and contemporary Ewe might create a revival of interest amongst researchers, enhance the understanding for the traditional Ewe culture and become reading material in schools and universities.
₵490.00₵500.00The Ewe People: A Study of the Ewe People in German Togo
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Lagos: City of the Imagination – Hardcover
“I don’t think you can be in Lagos without becoming aware of its potency; when Lagos gets itself organised it will be extremely powerful; and already – without organisation – it is very powerful.” Rem Koolhaas, 2002
Lagos is fast becoming a global city – a place people visit for curiosity and the vibe as much as for business or family. The mesmerising energy and intensity of the city have to be experienced to be understood. But what is the story of Lagos? When did the city begin? Who were the first inhabitants? When did it become the city of iniquity and wisdom that continues to confound all who encounters it? Who have been the key chroniclers of this real yet imaginary city?
Veteran journalist and writer Kaye Whiteman has given us a gem that answers these questions and more. Lagos: City of the Imagination explains the origins of Lagos as both outpost of the Benin Empire and also the city run by the White Cap Chiefs. Whiteman shows that Lagos was always multicultural and cosmopolitan, with the Portuguese and later educated returnees from Sierra Leone and artisans from Brazil adding to the eclectic mix.
The book examines the key moments in the history of Lagos: from the concerted attack by the British in the 1860s, Independence in 1960, the 1966 coup through to FESTAC and the assassination of Murtala Muhammed. Also included are vivid character portraits of some of the most powerful Lagosians in history, from Oba Kosoko and Madam Tinubu, to well-regarded colonial figures such as Sir Bernard Bourdillon and those – like Lord Lugard – not so fondly remembered.
As the name suggests, Lagos: City of the Imagination deals extensively in those for whom Lagos is the backdrop of their work, from highlife musicians and Fela Kuti to Wole Soyinka and, more recently, the American-Nigerian writer Teju Cole.
Lagos: City of the Imagination is an absorbing and delightful “must-read” for anyone with an interest in one of the most dramatic cities of the 21st century.
₵90.00 -
Amu the African: A Study in Vision and Courage
This book is an account of the life and work of Dr. Ephraim Amu, the renowned Ghanaian educationist and reformist — a great creative musician of world rank whose contributions are a cultural heritage for the world. It gives the story of Amu’s life and the contribution he has made to the development of the Church, Education, Morality, the Youth, Agriculture, Nutrition, Ghanaian Cultural Nationalism and, especially, the evolution of Ghanaian music.
Not since Dr Kwegyir Aggrey has any other Ghanaian influenced more positively the development of Ghanaian culture and pride in the African Personality than Dr Ephraim Amu.
₵80.00