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The contributors address various aspects of the challenges and opportunities of healthcare delivery in Africa. Chinua Akukwe, in an overview article, articulates reasons for a renewed focus on Africa's healthcare delivery systems. Bience Gawanas, Commissioner of Social Affairs at the Africa Union Commission whose portfolio includes health, discusses African Union's responses to the health challenges in the continent and argues that the "Africa Union is committed to quality healthcare delivery strategies for the continent that promotes universal access to every African no matter the geographical location and station in life." Former Nigerian First Lady, Mrs Maryam Babangida, focuses on the experiences of the Better Life Program for the African Rural Woman (BLPARW) which she founded and chair noting that.. ____________ For subscription inquiries, please email editor @adonis-abbey.com or call +44 (0)2077938893. For past editions of the journal, please visit: http: //adonisandabbey.com.(Click journals, select African Renaissance).

Chrys Chimé, a postgraduate student at Southampton, writes a book: The Wacky World of Dark Dictators. Many publishers are not impressed. Pete Alott, an upstart publisher and son of a British publishing mogul, decides to gamble on it. The book stirs up the Rastamuffins, an obscure group of fundamentalist Rastafarians that considers it heretical and a collective insult that Haile Selassie should be maligned as a dictator. The media take up the story, and cowboy publishing triumphs. Chrys's girlfriend, Amanda, is shot in Lagos, Nigeria. Chrys is abducted in London. The arrows point to the controversial book, but investigations also reveal a shocking web of intrigues, cultism, lies, and scams. The web leaves none of the players in this theatre innocent. With family sins and secrets shamelessly divulged in an arena that offers betrayals, envy, lust, and greed, it becomes difficult to differentiate the prey from the predator.

African AIDS, in the West, is often associated with media images of skeletal, forlorn-looking and dying Africans inviting the sympathy of the viewer or reader. Associated with these images are often motleys of subtly hidden narratives - poverty, promiscuity, failed leadership, impending Armageddon, and lately the greed and heartlessness of Western drugs companies who are harangued for prioritising profits over African lives. But how do Africans themselves see AIDS? What do they believe causes the disease? How do those affected by the undeniable epidemic really live with it? And how has the disease affected the Africans' sense of who they are? With the possible exception of the perspectives espoused by President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa - much of which is distorted - the African AIDS discourse, has, as with most things African, been severely marginalized, if not completely kept away from the Western media. Dr Raymond Downing, an American medical doctor, who with his wife (also a medical doctor) have been living and practising medicine in different African countries for over fifteen years, seeks to plug this lacuna with this book. Based on personal observations, interviews, the reading of African press, books and AIDS narrative in African fiction, as well as in academic papers, Dr Downing charts the development of the African AIDS discourse. He invites the reader to look beyond the AIDS epidemic to see how Africans view health and diseases in general. Raymond Downing was born in Massachusetts, USA, and studied medicine in New York between 1971 and 1975. He and his wife, Janice Armstrong, have practised medicine in Sudan, Tanzania and Kenya for more than fifteen years. His other books include The Wedding Goes On without Us, which was published in Kenya in 2002.

One of the major policy challenges for the US following the events of September 11 2001 and their aftermaths has been how to reduce the country's dependence on oil from the Middle East. There have been suggestions of policy shifts in Washington in which Africa's share of US oil imports will rise dramatically over the next few years. Nigeria, one of the world's largest producers of crude oil, is believed to have more than 30 billion barrels of crude oil reserves, mostly in the Niger Delta areas. Despite this huge reserve however, crude supplies from the country remains at best erratic largely because of conflicts, violence and the rise of ethnic militias in the oil-producing areas of the country. The book explores the causes, sources and dynamics of the conflicts between the oil-bearing communities and oil companies in Nigeria. Taking its point of departure from the social interaction paradigm, it argues that the conflicts in the Niger Delta are embedded in the triangular relationship between the government, the oil companies and the host communities. ________ Austin Onuoha, studied History at the University of Ife, Ile-Ife, Nigeria and did graduate studies in Conflict Transformations at the Eastern Mennonite University in Harrisonburg, Virginia, USA. He has worked on issues of human rights and conflict resolution in, and around the Niger Delta of Nigeria for over 10 years, including as the Executive Secretary/Head of Conflict Resolution at the Human Rights Commission, Abakaliki, Nigeria. He was also a consultant to the Centre for Social and Corporate Responsibility (CSCR) based in Nigeria's oil capital, Port Harcourt. He is currently a doctoral candidate in Conflict Analysis and Resolution at the Nova Southeastern University, Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and USA.

Authenticity - the external self in conformity with the inner self, to be sincere to oneself, is a state of genteel well being, and therefore of true happiness. It is the state of being whole, and in a sense, of experiencing holiness. It is the ideal of being a Christian in any cultural context, a challenge to all Christians everywhere. The response to the Word of God demands the readiness to be at its service. But this service is not simply allowing oneself to be an instrument, but also of actively being the agent, putting the word into action in the world. This means creatively activating the Spirit of God, the Spirit of the Word, within the culture, in the world, in individuals and in peoples at any time and place. It means the challenge to break through the limiting structures of body and mind in order to get to people's hearts, whatever may be their stations in life. These structures may differ from place to place and from time to time because every time or place has its peculiar challenges. For the Christian faith, the challenge is to activate the best within the indigenous culture of its practitioners, parishioners and sympathisers. The point of departure is that the best elements of a typical indigenous African culture are openness, sincerity of spirit, spontaneity, in a word, authenticity. These are far different from the superficial emotionalism, which some uninformed scholars and commentators have made these out to be. The reflections in the book suggest how the challenges to faith commitment in general, and in African socio-cultural context in particular, could be converted into opportunities to make faith-commitment a truly self-fulfilling vocation that will in turn create authentic discipleship.

Dike, a regular contributor to debates on Nigeria, assesses how far the Obasanjo regime has lived up to its promises between 1999 and 2003, and concludes that the president's Ostrich leadership-style has turned the country into a place where socio-political and economic problems remain unresolved.

This book brings together some of the idioms and proverbs commonly used in Africa. These are, as they say, the salt with which prudent speakers spice words and statements. Their measured and apt usages are also widely regarded as the hallmarks of sober oratory. A must-read to all interested in understanding the African worldview!

Samassi, a young man from one of the French-speaking African countries, secures a scholarship to study in London. Midway through his English language course his scholarship is withdrawn, forcing him to take up jobs to support himself. He graduates and eventually secures a good job -- after several futile attempts. the more he climbs the corporate ladder, the more he feels out of place. Convinced that his rightful place is in Africa, Samassi returns to live in neighbouring Senegal only to find himself in deep trouble, accused of murder, just a few months after his return. a fragmented and disjointed narrative style to capture the cadences of modern life in London, as seen by Africans.

African culture forbids children from speaking ill of their parents. Parental brutality, autocracy or neglect must either be denied or accepted as part of a strict upbringing regime designed to ensure that children are well-brought up to become useful to themselves in the future. Evans Kinyua breaks rank with this tradition. In a brutally frank and moving narration, he shows how an early damage by a dictatorial and uncaring father as well as the circumstances of his upbringing in rural Kenya affected his life and those of his brothers. He feels liberated when one day he draws out a knife to defend himself against an impending brutality from the patriarchal autocrat. But the damage has perhaps already been done. because he wants to encourage those who find themselves in similar situations. It is a story that is bound to appeal to anyone interested in how our early upbringing influences our personality and perspectives in life.

The contributors to this volume discuss the various issues, challenges and prospects of Africa's unity projects in ways that have, perhaps, not been previously articulated in African socio-political thoughts.

A cross between an academic journal and any higher-end news features magazine. It is a bi-monthly publication targeted principally at policy makers, policy makers, policy moulders, professionals, intellectuals and 'stakeholders' in African affairs. The aim is to have a platform where Africanists can engage in serious discussions without the Shenanigans that are usually associated with academic publications.