Taking the Great Rift Valley
- the geological fault that will eventually tear Africa in two
- as his central metaphor, Alex Perry explores the split between a resurgent Africa & a world at odds with its rise. Africa has long been misunderstood
- & abused
- by outsiders. Perry travelled the continent for most of a decade, meeting with entrepreneurs & warlords, professors & cocaine smugglers, presidents & jihadis, among many others. Opening with a devastating investigation into a largely unreported war crime in Somalia in 2011, he finds Africa at a moment of furious self-assertion. This is a remade continent, defiantly rising from centuries of oppression to become an economic & political titan: where cash is becoming a thing of the past, where astronomers are unlocking the origin of life & where, twenty-five years after Live Aid, Ethiopia`s first yuppies are traders on an electronic food exchange. Yet, as Africa finally wins the substance of its freedom, it must confront the three last false prophets of Islamists, dictators & aid workers, who would keep it in its bonds.