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The 'Curse of Berlin' problematizes Africa's changing international relations in the two decades since the end of the Cold War. It is written by Adekeye Adebajo who has been executive director of the Cape Town-based Centre for Conflict Resolution (CCR) since 2003 and previously served as director of the Africa programme of the International Peace Academy in New York (now the International Peace Institute). The book opens with a lengthy preface by the Kenyan-born scholar Ali A. Mazrui (b. 1933), one of the grand figures in the study of Africa's international relations (currently at SUNY Binghamton's Institute of Global Cultural Studies), to whom the volume is also dedicated. In his own opening chapter, Adebajo elaborates on the legacy of the Berlin Conference of 1884-5 for Africa, and on the 'Berlin curse of fragmentation' of the African people introduced in Mazrui's preface.
Thereafter the book is organised in three parts. In the first part, Adebajo looks at Africa's 'quest for security', with chapters on Africa's new peace and security architecture, Africa and the United Nations as well as the role of the two African UN...