Dictatorland: The Men Who Stole Africa
By Paul Kenyon
4.5/5
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About this ebook
'Jaw-dropping' Daily Express
'Grimly fascinating' Financial Times
'Humane, timely, accessible and well-researched' Irish Times
The dictator who grew so rich on his country's cocoa crop that he built a 35-storey-high basilica in the jungles of the Ivory Coast. The austere, incorruptible leader who has shut Eritrea off from the world in a permanent state of war and conscripted every adult into the armed forces. In Equatorial Guinea, the paranoid despot who thought Hitler was the saviour of Africa and waged a relentless campaign of terror against his own people. The Libyan army officer who authored a new work of political philosophy, The Green Book, and lived in a tent with a harem of female soldiers, running his country like a mafia family business.
And behind these almost incredible stories of fantastic violence and excess lie the dark secrets of Western greed and complicity, the insatiable taste for chocolate, oil, diamonds and gold that has encouraged dictators to rule with an iron hand, siphoning off their share of the action into mansions in Paris and banks in Zurich and keeping their people in dire poverty.
Paul Kenyon
Paul Kenyon is a distinguished BBC correspondent and BAFTA award-winning journalist and author. He has reported from danger-zones around the world for BBC Panorama, pushing the boundaries of investigative journalism and asking the questions many wouldn't dare – from tackling Gaddafi's son in a cage full of lions, to secretly filming Iran's secret nuclear sites. Kenyon is the recipient of an Association of International Broadcasters Award, three Royal Television Society awards, and is the author of Dictatorland, a Financial Times Book of the Year. He lives in London with his wife, Flavia.
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Reviews for Dictatorland
23 ratings1 review
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Riveting, horrifying account of the rise and sometimes fall of the worst leaders in Africa, the dictators who took mostly newly independent countries and then bled them dry while simultaneously terrorizing any dissent with utter brutality. The usual suspects - Mugabe, Mobutu, Gaddafi are here, as well as lesser-known tyrants - Houphouet-Boigny of Cote d'Ivoire, Obiang of Equatorial Guinea, Abachi of Nigeria, and possibly the least-known of all, Isias Afwerki of Eritrea, who runs possibly the world's most secretive country, which makes North Korea look like a paragon of freedom and openness. Kenyon sheets home a large part of the blame to the West, whose desperation for oil, minerals and even cocoa led to corrupt deals which pumped billions into offshore accounts and turning a blind eye to the most heinous brutality. Kenyon makes free use of eyewitness testimony to the horrendous acts of the dictators, and the book pulls no punches in describing the worst acts. Its is not a comfortable book to read, but compelling, and leaves the reader pondering just what went wrong in Africa and how the consequences of decades of dictatorship can possibly be rectified.