Continent of heartbreak

In March 1957, congratulatory messages from world leaders including Eisenhower, Nehru, Zhou En-lai and Queen Elizabeth II poured into Ghana, even as delegations from 56 countries were arriving there for six days of festivities. At that moment, there seemed to be much to celebrate. Ghana was gaining its independence from Britain. Rich in cocoa, gold, timber, and bauxite, the infant nation seemed destined for a bright future. At its helm stood national hero Kwame Nkrumah. [Editor's note: The original version incorrectly stated that Eisenhower and Queen Elizabeth attended the festivies.]

This competent and well-educated man, a political-prisoner-turned-leader, charmed the global elite who surrounded him as the world arrived to fête his country. He opened the State Ball paired with the Duchess of Kent, employing dance steps taught him only hours earlier by Louis Armstrong's wife Lucille.

Such is the lively scene painted in the first chapter of "The Fate of Africa: From the Hopes of Freedom to the Heart of Despair" by veteran Africa observer Martin Meredith.

But by Chapter 15, it's the early 1970s, and Nkrumah - overthrown by his own military in 1966 - is a deluded and pathetic man living in exile in Guinea in a villa with a leaking roof. Ghana was by then on its way to utter impoverishment, with crime rates soaring, public services crumbling, and the educated classes in flight.

This month - between Live 8 concerts and the meeting of the G-8 leaders in Edinburgh - the world is again turning its attention to Africa. But today there is less than ever to celebrate, according to Meredith.

"The Fate of Africa" is not an easy book to read. Not because of its length - the pages actually turn quite easily as Meredith strides through a half century of the tumult of African independence - but rather because it tells of so much heartbreak.

Yet Meredith leaves readers little time to indulge in emotion. In a style that is broad rather than deep, his narrative rushes from country to country, determined to touch down in all corners of the continent.

He tells the stories of a generation of young nationalist leaders in Africa - Nkrumah in Ghana, Jomo Kenyatta in Kenya, Gamal Abdel Nasser in Egypt, Léopold Senghor of Senegal, Haile Selassie in Ethiopia - and of their early successes and later failures.

The book explains the ways in which the different European colonizers either accepted and facilitated the emergence of the new nations (the British) or turned the separation into bitter and sometimes bloody struggles (the French and the Portuguese).

It chronicles the shocking excesses and even madness of some African leaders (Jean-Bedel Bokassa who spent $22 million on his coronation as emperor of the Central African Republic) and the willingness of world leaders to overlook their worst practices. (Joseph Mobutu of Zaire, believed to have stolen an estimated $5 billion from his crumbling nation, later warmly recalled his stay with the Bush family in Kennebunkport.)

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