The African Renaissance and the Afro-Arab Spring: A Season of Rebirth?

The African Renaissance and the Afro-Arab Spring addresses the often unspoken connection between the powerful call for a political-cultural renaissance that emerged with the end of South African apartheid and the popular revolts of 2011 that dramatically remade the landscape in Egypt, Libya, and Tunisia. Looking between southern and northern Africa, the transcontinental line from Cape to Cairo that for so long supported colonialism, its chapters explore the deep roots of these two decisive events and demonstrate how they are linked by shared opposition to legacies of political, economic, and cultural subjugation. As they work from African, Islamic, and Western perspectives, the book’s contributors shed important light on a continent’s difficult history and undertake a critical conversation about whether and how the desire for radical change holds the possibility of a new beginning for Africa, a beginning that may well reshape the contours of global affairs.

Charles Villa-Vicencio is a visiting professor in the Conflict Resolution Program at Georgetown University and senior research fellow at the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation in Cape Town.

Erik Doxtader is a professor of rhetoric at the University of South Carolina and a senior research fellow at the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation in Cape Town.

Ebrahim Moosa is a professor of Islamic Studies with appointments in the Department of History and the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame.