One should expect the eigth volume of UNESCO's General History of Africa to be the most disappointing in the series. The previous volumes had shown the motive behind UNESCO's project was not so much to make a history of africa as to make a history africans should be proud of. That is one hard task to accomplish once you try and tackle with the post-colonial history of the continent. One can understand the focus on the struggle for independence, even though some of the chapters read tiring. It is the chapters on independent africa that simply are not honest history-making: terror, censorship and corruption in the new-born african nations does not figure in this book, the mad reveries of african socialism and personality-cult are politely brushed aside. This is not the history of africa as one can tell it today, it is an elaboration on the politically correct which does africans no favor.