Africa was a key focus of Britain's foreign policy under Tony Blair. Military intervention in Sierra Leone, increases in aid and debt relief, and grand initiatives such as the Commission for Africa established the continent as a place in which Britain could 'do good'. Britain and Africa under Blair: in pursuit of the good state critically explores Britain's fascination with Africa. It argues that, under New Labour, Africa represented an area of policy that appeared to transcend politics. Gradually, it came to embody an ideal state activity around which politicians, officials and the wider...

Africa doesn't have a good image. For many, particularly in the West, the continent summons up ideas of corrupt leadership, malnourished, diseased children, conflict and crime from internet scams to piracy. Often it seems that outsiders - development agencies, well-meaning pop stars and foreign media - are the chief shapers of African images while African agents are passive or impotent.
Images of Africa challenges the idea that Africans are powerless in the creation of self-image. It explores the ways in which image creation is a process of negotiation entered into by a wide range of...

Images of Africa challenges the widely-held idea that Africans are powerless in the creation of self-image. It explores the ways in which image creation is a process of negotiation entered into by a wide range of actors within and beyond the continent - in presidents' offices and party HQs, in newsrooms and rural authorities, in rebel militia bases and in artists' and writers' studies.

Its ten chapters, written by scholars working across the continent and a range of disciplines, develop innovative ways of thinking about how image is produced. They ask: who controls image, how is it...