Africabeat

Kebra Nagast

I'm a little surprised I managed to be on this planet for 25 years without learning anything about the Kebra Nagast.  Samuel Malher, a scholar from Strasbourg, has just published the first unabridged French translation, and I have excerpts from an interview with him by Roots and Culture up at Global Voices.

This week, francophone blog Roots and Culture interviews [FR] Samuel Malher, a religious scholar from Strasbourg who has written the first unabridged French translation of the Kebra Negast, a sacred Ethiopian text.

The Kebra Negast, or the Glory of Kings, is considered sacred not only by Orthodox Ethiopian Christians, who comprise 65% of the country's population, but many Jamaican Rastafarians who believe it predicts the last Ethiopian King was God incarnate. It documents the lineage of the Ethiopian monarchs, who are said to descend directly from Menelik, son of the Israelite King Solomon and the Ethiopian Queen Makeda, otherwise known as the Queen of Sheba.  It also tells the story of how the Ark of the Covenant was taken from Israel to Ethiopia, and how the Ethiopians became God's new chosen people.

Keep reading

States and Power in Africa

States and Power in Africa - I first realized I wanted to be a political scientist while reading this book for the second time. Stresses imposed borders, population density and distribution, and the problem of "broadcasting" authority across vast tracts of sparsely populated lands as key challenges of African political development. 

In the words of Wikipedia, this article is only a stub.  I'm gonna expand it at some point.  For now, all I have to say is that this book rocks.  I don't agree with every single argument, but it still rocks.