Continent for the Taking: The Tragedy and Hope of Africa (41 page)
Read Continent for the Taking: The Tragedy and Hope of Africa Online
Authors: Howard W. French
Tags: #Fiction
President Mobutu Sese Seko: The Leopard, The Helmsman, The Guide
Hutu refugees on the run, Tingi-Tingi, Zaire
A Serbian mercenary training a Zairian soldier in Kisangani, Zaire
A pro-democracy march in Kinshasa led by Etienne Tshisekedi (center), dismissed as prime minister by Mobutu
Borrowing a page from Mobutu, President Laurent Kabila built a personality cult in Congo before his death in 2001.
The former Foreign Ministry headquarters, Monrovia, now a home for squatters
Howard W. French
A Continent for the Taking
Howard W. French is a senior writer for The New York
Times
. After teaching at the University of Ivory Coast in the early 1980s, he began his journalism career writing about Africa for
The Washington Post
,
Africa News
,
The
Economist
, and numerous other publications. Since 1986, he has reported for
The Times
from Central America, the Caribbean, West and Central Africa, Japan, Korea, and now China. In 1997, his coverage of the fall of Mobuto Sese Seko won the Overseas Press Club of America’s award for best newspaper interpretation of foreign affairs. French was born in Washington, D.C., and now lives in Shanghai with his wife and their two children.
FIRST VINTAGE BOOKS EDITION, APRIL 2005
Copyright © 2004 by Howard W. French
Vintage and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
The Library of Congress has cataloged the Knopf edition as follows:
French, Howard W.
A continent for the taking: the tragedy and hope of Africa / Howard W. French.—1st ed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
1. Africa, Sub-Saharan—Description and travel. 2. Africa, Sub-Saharan—Social
conditions—1960– 3. Africa, Sub-Saharan—Politics and government—1960–
4. United States—Foreign relations—Africa, Sub-Saharan. 5. Africa, Sub-Saharan—
Foreign relations—United States. I. Title.
DT352.2.F74 2004
967.03’2—dc22
2003058920
Photographs
©
Robert Grossman
Map by
Jeffrey Ward
eISBN: 978-0-307-42430-3
v3.0