LEARNING OUTCOMES

The course aims to provide an overview of contemporary African history, covering a wide array of political, socia and economic themes. The lessons will be mainly focused on the colonial and postcolonial period, with the aim of highlighting long-term processes of continuity as well as ruptures and historical turns. The course will cover both Sub-Saharan and North Africa, placing Africa in a broad context of trans-regional and global interactions, since the XVth century slave-trade up to the present-day globalized world system. Some of the themes covered by the lessons will be: the colonial scramble for Africa; the birth and development of African nationalist movements; the origin and unresolved issues of the African independent state; the challenge of economic and human development; authoritarianism and democracy in Africa; civil wars and political violence; Africa in the era of globalization.