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From Dar es Salaam to Bongoland: Urban Mutations in Tanzania
The name Dar es Salaam comes from the Arabic phrase meaning house of peace. A popular but erroneous translation is ‘haven of peace’ resulting from a mix-up of the Arabic words “dar” (house) and “bandar” (harbour). Named in 1867 by the Sultan of Zanzibar, the town has for a long time benefitted from a reputation of being a place of tranquility. The tropical drowsiness is a comfort to the socialist poverty and under-equipment that causes an unending anxiety to reign over the town. Today, for the Tanzanian, the town has become Bongoland, that is, a place where survival is a matter of cunning and intelligence (bongo means ‘brain’ in Kiswahili). Far from being an anecdote, this slide into toponomy records the mutations that affect the links that Tanzanians maintain with their principal city and the manner in which it represents them.
This book takes into account the changes by departing from the hypothesis that they reveal a process of territorialisation. What are the processes – envisaged as spatial investments – which, by producing exclusivity, demarcations and exclusions, fragment the urban space and its social fabric? Do the practices and discussions of the urban dwellers construct limited spaces, appropriated, identified and managed by communities (in other words, territories)? Dar es Salaam is often described as a diversified, relatively homogenous and integrating place. However, is it not more appropriate to describe it as fragmented?
As territorialisation can only occur through frequenting, management and localised investment, it is therefore through certain places – first shelter and residential area, then the school, daladala station, the fire hydrant and the quays – that the town is observed. This led to broach the question in the geographical sense of urban policy carried out since German colonisation to date. At the same time, the analysis of these developments allows for an evaluation of the role of the urban crisis and the responses it brings.
In sum, the aim of this approach is to measure the impact of the uniqueness of the place on the current changes. On one hand, this is linked to its long-term insertion in the Swahili civilisation, and on the other, to its colonisation by Germany and later Britain and finally, to the singularity of the post-colonial path. This latter is marked by an alternation of Ujamaa with Structural Adjustment Plans applied since 1987. How does this remarkable political culture take part in the emerging city today?
This book is a translation of De Dar es Salaam à Bongoland: Mutations urbaines en Tanzanie, published by Karthala, Paris in 2006.
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The African Writers’ Handbook
Available from 27 June 2022
African Books Collective and the Dag Hammarskjold Foundation organised the African-Writers Publishers Seminar in Tanzania in 1998. Major African writers and publishers hammered out a ‘New Deal’ for relations between the two.
This practical manual includes the ‘New Deal’ statement, and carries forward the work of the seminar. Intended for the aspiring or not yet established creative writer, the answers are given on how to get published, how publishing works, relations with publishers, and how to find resources. With an introduction by Niyi Osundare, the book is in two parts. First, respected African writers and publishers contribute their experiences and perspectives on writing and publishing in Africa — Dapo Adeniyi, Walter Bgoya, Henry Chakava, Cyprian Ekwensi, Taban lo Liyong, Kole Omotoso, Onsonye Tess Onwueme, Femi Osofisan, Niyi Osundare and the late Ken Saro-Wiwa, Yvonne Vera and Paul Tiyambe Zeleza.
A massive amount of practical information and resource materials is given on prizes, writers’ organisations, magazines, vanity and self-publishing, literary agents, censorship, book fairs, resources for writers on the Internet and more. James Currey, Mary Jay, Michael Norton and Hans Zell also contribute.
‘…A veritable mine of advice and practical information and also experiences and ideas, a reference work of great quality…’ — Takam Tikou, No 8, 2000
₵180.00The African Writers’ Handbook
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The Experience of Politics: A Manual for Ghanaian and African Politicians
P.K.K. Quaidoo was educated at St. Augustine’s College, Cape Coast, Achimota College and the University of Bristol where he graduated in Mathematics, Philosophy and Latin, Magna cum laude. He was later elected to Parliament (1954-56; 1957-61) where he established himself as a debater with outstanding courage, thus earning the nickname ‘Asem Yi Di Ka’ (say it and be damned!).
He held several portfolios as a Cabinet Minister: Trade and Labour (1957-58), Communications (1958) and Social Welfare (1960-61). He travelled widely: to Europe, the USA, Canada and the Far East and within Africa. He was decorated by the late Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia as a Knight Companion of the Lion of Juda.
Mr. Quaidoo often contributed articles to the Catholic Standard. He got married and had two sons and four daughters.
Contents
- Preliminary requirements
- Field discipleship and apprenticship
- Strategies of reform and maintenance
- Some puzzling questions about Ghanaian society
- They also serve who only stand and wait
- Building the support base
- Inside the political arena
- Global vision and horizon
- The field of labour at a glance
- Relics of the past
- Priorities, programmes and the timetables.
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For Freedom or Bondage?: A Critique of African Pastoral Practices
In Ghana today, many people who suffer from a variety of human ills wander from one pastor to another in search of a spiritual cure. Because of the way cultural beliefs about the spiritual world have interwoven with their Christian faith, many Ghanaian Christians live in bondage to their fears of evil spiritual powers, seeing Jesus as a superior power to use against these malevolent spiritual forces.
In For Freedom or Bondage? Esther Acolatse argues that Christian pastoral practices in many African churches include too much influence from African traditional religions. She examines Ghana Independent Charismatic churches as a case study, offering theological and psychological analysis of current pastoral care practices through the lenses of Barth and Jung. Facilitating a three-strand conversation between African traditional religion, Barthian theology, and Jungian analytical psychology, Acolatse interrogates problematic cultural narratives and offers a more nuanced approach to pastoral care.
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The Diary of a Missionary Wife
In a time where Sacrifice is no longer a much talked about subject preached in Christian circles, the average believer is tempted to forget those who have left their comfort zones to go fulfill the Great Commission in foreign lands.
This book was written to remind us that there are some workers in the body who have been forgotten and need to be strengthened. However, as a compilation of testimonies and personal experiences, the author seeks to exalt God and His miraculous involvement in the life of anyone who dedicates to serve Him and fulfill this mission calling.
It will empower missionaries to continue believing and trusting a God who is ever present and it will remind believers of the forgotten ones.
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Managing Your Life
Managing Your Life is sequel to Living by Strategy, by the same author. It takes on the task of reducing strategies to the day-to-day actions to achieve the mission, vision, goals and roles of a person. It is about actualizing personal strategic plan to achieve personal, social and vocational development.
In this book, the author dedicates a chapter to each area of your life you have to manage. The chapter headings are pointers to their content in each of the fourteen chapters, which are grouped in Five Parts.
- Part One: Leading and Managing Yourself
- Part Two: Managing Your Private Life
- Part Three: Managing Your Relational Life
- Part Four: Managing Your Public Life
- Part Five: Managing Your Spiritual Life
If we are intentional about living, and manage our lives as best as we can, we are likely to leave a lasting legacy for our generation and posterity. It prepares them to face the inevitable.
₵85.00Managing Your Life
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Living by Strategy
The message of this book is as simple as it has the power to propel readers to drastically change their lives’ outcome in almost every sphere of life. It is an invitation to be more intentional about how we live and to have fun doing so (i.e. without paranoia). The Wheel of Life the book introduces gives a snapshot of its content. This book invites readers to join in the exciting and truthful venture of mission-vision-goal living, propelled by core principles to drive one’s Professional, Physical, Spiritual, Social, Family, Intellectual, Financial and Marital Life. Doing so with a balance in one’s Personal, Relational and Work Life is at the core of the book.
The author shares a concept of Organising Principle that simplifies living and yet leads to a life of success with significance, positivity on one hand and how to avoid being “a successful failure” on the other hand.
Living by Strategy is a seminal contribution to the life management of personal living.
₵85.00Living by Strategy
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The GIMPA Story: Transforming a Public Service Training School into a Self-Financing University of Leadership, Management, and Administration in Ghana
Driven by the passion of his vision agenda for the cause of his appointment as Director-General of the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration, GIMPA, from 1st January 2000 to December 2008, Stephen Adei (now Professor Emeritus), the first Rector of GIMPA, set out to do the seemingly impossible in the rough terrain of a predominantly patrimonial and static Ghanaian society.
With the encouragement of his first Council and despite fierce resistance to his vision and tenure from intransigent and powerful forces from within the Institute, a section of the media and political bigwigs, Stephen championed his vision cause with the unalloyed support of a loyal few from GIMPA, and importantly, with the support of his dear wife, and friend, Mrs. Georgina Adei, his steadfast faith in the Lord Jesus, the Bible-centered values and principles.
From January 2000 to December 2008, Stephen with his team chalked an enviable vision of success in transforming a public service training institution into a self-financing public university and a centre of excellence in leadership, management, and administration in Ghana.
In this revealing book, he evokes memories of that hard road to vision success, imparts valuable leadership lessons, and, importantly, shares this experience as “a testimony of what the Lord Jesus Christ…can do with His feeble servants.”
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Powers, Principalities, and the Spirit: Biblical Realism in Africa and the West
Among the many factors that separate churches in the West from those of the global South, there may be no greater difference than their respective attitudes toward supernatural “powers and principalities.”
In this follow-up to her book For Freedom or Bondage? African theologian Esther Acolatse bridges the enormous hermeneutical gap not only between the West and global Christianity but also between the West and its own biblical-theological heritage.
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Labour Law in Ghana: An Essential Guide
This text is specifically designed to provide an essential guide to the labour law of Ghana. It is a very comprehensive text, covering all aspects of this area of the law, including the distinction between contract of service and contract for services, formation of the contract of employment, termination of the contract of employment, the rights and duties of employers and workers, dismissal of an employee, the distinction between the terms ‘termination’ and ‘dismissal’, as used in the context of employment, strikes as legitimate weapons in the hands of employees/workers and lockouts as legitimate weapons in the hands of employers, occupational health and safety, retirement and pensions and workmen’s compensation.
The author presents the material in a very simple, straightforward and logically coherent manner and this makes reading the text very fascinating. It is an essential resource for all those seeking to get to grips with this fascinating area of law. Lawyers, Judges, HR Practitioners, Trade Union Leaders, Employers and Workers or Employees will find this text an invaluable resource. Lecturers and students of labour law will also find this text very useful as it fully and thoroughly covers the syllabus requirements of the LLB Laws, BA Human Resource Management, MBA Human Resources and related courses.
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Southern African Liberation Struggles 1960-1994 (Contemporaneous Documents, 9 Volumes)
These 9 volumes are the most comprehensive historical record of the liberation struggles in southern Africa. Comprising 2.4 million words in 5,394 pages, they record interviews with liberation fighters and supporters in the Frontline states and the extraordinary sacrifices they made so that Africa could at last be free. With the fall of the South African apartheid regime, the Southern African Development Community (SADC) identified the need to record the experiences of the liberation struggles in Southern Africa, from 1960 until that final liberation in 1994. To that end, SADC launched the Hashim Mbita Project – named after the last Executive Secretary of the OAU Liberation Committee.
The research covered liberation movements in the countries which engaged in liberation wars, the Frontline states and Extension countries; and the Research Project team comprised members from the SADC mainland states of Angola, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Tanzania, Zambia, Malawi, Lesotho and Swaziland. The support received from other regions is documented: Anglophone West Africa, Francophone Africa, North Africa, East Asia, Canada and the United States, Cuba and the Caribbean, the German Democratic Republic (GDR), Nordic Countries, Western Europe, the Soviet Union, Non-Aligned Movement: India, Yugoslavia, Indonesia, Sri lanka; Organisation of African Unity and United Nations.
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The Mkapa Years: Collected Speeches (3-Volume Box Set, Hardcover)
This collection of speeches, in three volumes, by the third President of the United Republic of Tanzania, Benjamin William Mkapa (1995–2005), will serve primarily as reference documents to the vision of what he attempted to achieve in his ten years of leadership. His tenure as a leader came at a time when Tanzania’s economy was in dire condition. The legacy of the command economy, which had been in place for much of the 1970s and 1980s, was still felt. There was resistance to change to adopt a market economy, evident in the political tensions and debates about privatisation, an approach following Structural Adjustment Programmes, imposed by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, that had led to stagnation of the economy, high inflation, deteriorating health, education, communication, and transport sector services, as well as general gloom in the country especially among the poor. The bold steps he took during the first half of his administration did not immediately endear him to the public. However, in the ensuing years, slowly but steadily, positive results were achieved, and the social cost of change that the people had endured was appreciated. Relations with development partners and the multilateral agencies that before he took office had sunk to the lowest ebb were restored, and Tanzania, which was no longer unfit to borrow, received the largest debt relief ever and henceforth. Tanzania was on its way to new growth potentials and a vibrant private sector-led economy.
These collected speeches tell this story and tell it well, in great prose laced with wit and quotations from world political and literary sources, which is an evidence of his erudition as a literature student and journalist.
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The Einstellung Effect
We become unable to consider other solutions when we think we already have one that works, even though it may not be accurate or optimal. It leaves us cognitively incapable of differentiating previous experiences with the current problem. So we may solve a problem but we don’t actually INNOVATE.
Einstelung is a German word that translates to setting, mindset, or attitude. The brain attempts to work efficiently by referring to past solutions without giving the current problem much thought. It’s stuck in a mindset. We apply previous methods to a seemingly similar problem instead of evaluating the problem on its own terms. This effect presents itself across various disciplines and skill levels. Whether we know it or not, we all experience it.
This book explores INNOVATION like never before.
₵50.00The Einstellung Effect
₵50.00