Essay collection presents a tapestry of Africa

Africa has always been marked by difference, globally, and this difference always bears negativity, and tends to perpetuate stereotypes.

- Ahmet Sait Akcay

What Adekeye Adebajo’s recent work The Splendid Tapestry of African Life: Essays on a Resilient Continent, Its Diaspora, and the World, counts for is to challenge and make that difference a positive appeal to the continent.

The book is a collection of essays penned over a period of three decades, covering most compelling issues, debates and developments across the continent.

It is the outcome of Adebajo’s intellectual engagement which evolved and established a comprehensive and grounded critique, thoughts and reviews over the time.

The collection is broken into 10 chapters, with 36 essays in total.

The titles of essays are full of echoes and implications that bring a global kind of rendering to the issues explored.

Among the names invoked throughout the book are William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, Pliny the Elder, Ali Mazrui, John Milton, Jonathan Swift, Chinua Achebe to name just a few.

Even the title of the book resonates with Nigerian novelist, poet and Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka’s latest novel, Chronicles from the Land of the Happiest People on Earth, where he laments the decay of beauties spoiled by the politics of corruption in his country.

The title of the book also suggests a striking contrast with the issues covered, or more deeply, a politics of difference, which comes to mind when dealing with Africa.

This contrast is summed up as follows: Africa we believe versus Africa we think. For the problematic arises out of difference, challenges and analysis.