Burden of hope
What hope does the future hold for Africa? Sue Shaw investigates.

Guns, idiots and screams
Ghanaian writer George Ayittey demands a new look at an old African tradition of democracy.

A maize miracle
Colleen Lowe Morna on why Zimbabwe faces feast not famine.

The history of Africa

The road to USSA
What next after apartheid? Mozambican journalist Carlos Cardoso charts a way forward.

Hope at long last
Ordinary Ugandans are dragging their country back from the brink. Catharine Watson explains how.

AFRICA - THE FACTS

Zaire's den of thieves
Steve Askin takes the lid off one of the most rotten regimes in the world.

Simply - African ecology

Sapping Nigeria's poor
Most Nigerians would rather trust GOD than the IMF. Elizabeth Obadina reports.

Aid monstrosities
A guided tour around some of the strangest development programmes in Africa with Robert Woods.

Learning to grow
Kenyan journalist Rebeka Njau reveals how Maasai mothers have dealt with drought.

At one point during the last few months, I considered calling this magazine 'Scratching around to find hope for Africa.' Journalists are apt to become irreverent when they are unable to unearth the information that they need in a hurry.

Of course there was hope. I knew that. I had come across a great deal when I travelled in Africa. Like the women in Kenya who set up a co-operative farm to generate income for their families. Or those who worked as unpaid village health workers in Zimbabwe advising local families on nutrition and health care. There were Africans I knew who felt so passionate about their governments' lunatic and unjust policies that they were prepared to be tortured rather than remain silent. Such people offered hope of the most impressive kind.

The problem begins when you start scouring Africa's horizon for bright-spots on a larger scale - like an economic boom or two. Good fortune in the near future is very hard to see. And that is why the NI collective asked me to do this magazine in the first place. The prospect for Africa - particularly south of the Sahara - looked terribly bleak and we needed to think hard about why this was and what could be done to improve the situation.

Meanwhile, amid this difficulty, New Internationalist moved offices. Imagine the chaos. Our entire publishing operation - from the typesetting equipment down to the paperclips in the bottom of our desk drawers - was transferred into boxes and left to its fate with the removal people.

This magazine was still in its early stages. It consisted of a heap of books, papers and photos horribly vulnerable to the uncanny knack such things have for sliding behind radiators and similar places never to be seen again. The lot had to be bundled into a knapsack and stashed in my bedroom - not necessarily a guarantee of safety - until it was safe to let it out again.

Poor Africa was rather squashed when it saw the light of day. It had experienced many exciting adventures, including a journey down the motorway in a car that broke down and had to be towed back.

Fortunately no parts of the magazine were lost. And the search for hope continued, aided and abetted by journalists from around the African continent.

Finally I had so much material that I couldn't fit it all in. The last few days of putting the pages together have been a mad rush of hacking and shaping, trying to squash large quantities of words into small spaces.

Among the things I was most reluctant to dispense with were photos of some of the contributions Westerners have sent to Africa as emergency aid - mountains of slimming products donated to the undernourished residents of Somali refugee camps for example; electric blankets and treatments for heartburn. And for the women of Mozambique who have to walk several miles daily to fetch water, a motley assortment of very pointed, high-heeled shoes.

More unhelpful footwear would be hard to imagine. But then the West has never been a tower of strength to Africa, as you will discover...

Letters
Letter from La Paz
Update
Endpiece: by Judy Blenkinship and Andrew Wilson
Reviews: including Adrienne Rich classic
Country profile: Papua New Guinea

FRONT COVER Photo: Jon Delorme / Panos Pictures
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