Happy Africa Day

Yesterday was Africa Day and as I read some posts I saw cliche pictures of animals and women with pots on heads… but to me, Africa is summarised in the picture of a confident child, this expressing the youth (entrepreneur driven) dividend, and that the narrative of Africa Rising is a reality and not just marketing.

I have lived on the African continent for the past 15 years and have written about a fictional country, Afronia, but which is based around African fact. So, whether Malawi, Zimbabwe, Ethiopia or indeed any other African country is you home, or you have visited for business or pleasure, or you are simply curious, I hope you can believe in the Afronia series.

I deliberately use a range of characters so that you, as the reader, can peer into the daily lives, fears, challenges and opportunities that a president, housewife, militiaman, army colonel, student, journalist, or foreigner, who lives in such a country as Afronia, might think, feel and experience. I tackle social, economic, cultural, religious and political questions, which many countries on the continent, and indeed globally, are currently grappling with. In doing so, I hope you will understand a little bit more about the curses of corruption and nepotism, a little bit more about how so many have so little, and how when absolute poverty sits side-by-side with a lack of human rights in the shadow of an elite can drive…