The State of Africa by Martin Meredith

If you are looking to read a comprehensive book about the recent history of Africa then I would suggest reading Martin Meredith's "The State of Africa". A Cameroonian friend of mine suggested this book and I have to say I've now have a more clear picture of Africa and the reasons behind its current state.
In almost 700 pages Meredith manages to give, in his easy to read style, a comprehensive picture of contemporary African politics going through almost fifty years of independence covering the entire continent. Starting with Ghana in the late 1950s and closing with Zimbabwe and South Africa, Meredith observes the historical similarities between most of the countries which passed from the euphoria and hope of independence to the cruelty and corruption of single party politics based mostly on tribal loyalty. Examples of governments lavish spending and corruption are plentiful. President Omar Bongo of Gabon ordered a new palace for himself with sliding walls and doors, rotating rooms and a private nightclub, costing well over $200 million. In 1984, while in the countryside of Ethiopia millions of people were starving to death, Colonel Mengistu Haile Mariam was planning his spectacular celebration to mark the 10th anniversary of Ethiopia's revolution. In 2003 six of the seven wealthiest people in Angola where government officials and the combined wealth of just 60 people was $4 billion, almost half of the country's GDP.
So how did this continent become the most desperately poor and underdeveloped region in the area, despite receiving the most financial aid? Reading this book the pattern seems common for most countries. A new state emerges with an early promise of freedom and prosperity with a charismatic leader like Mugabe, of whom Ian Smith, the leader of white Rhodesia said "He behaved like a balanced, civilized westerner, the antithesis of the communist gangster I had expected". But soon corruption is everywhere, palaces are built, top jobs go to a select few fellow tribesmen, opposite political parties are violently banned and the economy collapses … all laying the ground for a coup that will bring another idealist military leader who would end up to be a clone of the tyrant he deposed.
Of course there are exceptions of African countries like Botswana and of leaders like Mandela, but Meredith leaves the reader to decide for himself which is the more critical in holding the continent back: Not enough debt relief, free trade and aid or just bad leadership.

Collapse by Jared Diamond

In his book Collapse, Jared Diamond tells the story of how societies choose to fail or survive considering 5 possible contributing factors: environmental damage, climate change, hostile neighbours, friendly trade partners and finally and always important the society's responses to its environmental problems.
The diversity of case studies he uses is extraordinary. He begins with the small communities of present-day Montana as they face a decline in living standards and a depletion of natural resources. We read about the Greenland's Vikings who had to leave Greenland in the hands of the Inuit (Eskimos) who built igloos for winter housing and hunted with their kayaks and harpoons, showing that even in difficult environments, collapses of human societies are not inevitable, but depends on how people respond. Modern day Haiti and the Dominican Republic share the island of Hispanolia which was originally largely forested, but today 28% of the Domican Republic is forested as opposed to only 1% of Haiti. If you stand on the border and
you look west you look at brown fields with no trees, but if you look towards the east you see gree pine forests.
Diamond tries to answers questions such: How could a society fail to have seen the dangers that seem so clear to us in retrospect? What were Easter Islanders saying as they cut down the last tree on their island ? Like modern loggers did they shout "Jobs, not trees" or "Technology will solve our problems, we'll find a substitute for wood"? Or "we don't have proof that there aren't palms somewhere else on the island, we need more research, your proposed ban on logging is premature and driven by fear-mongering" 

The often irreconcilable clash between the pursuit of short-term gratification and the defence of future generations' long-term interests can be seen in many of his case studies. Diamond offers some explanations such as "Creeping normalcy" which refers to slow trends concealed within noisy fluctation, like Al Gore's example of climate change where noisy fluctiations conceal the slow trends of rising temperatures and CO2 emission. And "Landscape amnesia" where we forget that a mountaintop was once snow covered.
The book finally considers the impact of big businesses and how some are amongst the most
environmentally destructive forces today (examples are abundant), while others provide some of the most effective environmental protection even if the ultimate reason is again for shareholder value. To his astonishment he discovered when visiting Chevron's oil field in New Guinea that many bird and mammal species were much more numerous inside the Chevron area than anywhere else in the wild in the island, apart from a few remote uninhabited areas.