Some within the donor community tagged 2005 as The Year of Africa, with the publication of the report by Blair's Commission for Africa, the focus on Africa at the G-8 summit in Gleneagles, the Live8 concert and the Make Poverty History campaigns raising public awareness. The year 2005 also represented the twentieth anniversary of Timberlake's classic Africa in Crisis, a book that for many years framed debates around environmental degradation and famine. Towards a New Map of Africa presents itself as a successor to the Timberlake volume, and uses 2005 as a vantage point to assess developments within the continent.

The resulting edited volume includes a number of essays that appraise different aspects of economic, political and social life in Africa, with an emphasis on developments at the grassroots. These surveys generally show a sharp eye for detail, and a commitment to avoid both overly romantic views of resilient Africans solving problems in their communities, and overly pessimistic and cynical accounts that cannot see beyond the tragic levels of violence, poverty and injustice. Most of the authors seek to present balance sheets on key issues, noting areas of promise along with the enormous problems. The editor's introductory overview, for example, argues that there is ‘much that is positive’, but there are also ‘terrifying challenges’ (p. 29).

The collection opens with a number of chapters on African livelihoods that highlight local level resourcefulness and innovation. Contributors discuss how micro-credit, small-scale manufacturing and artisanal fishing contribute to diverse strategies by Africans to cope in the face of multiple pressures. Along with these stories of small victories and hints of local capacities to build a better future are accounts of the terrible price of HIV/AIDS, the failed promise of economic growth, and the ways that the legacies of colonialism continue to distort processes of statebuilding, concepts of citizenship and institutions of government. De Waal's essay on HIV/AIDS is unambiguous on the scale of devastation, arguing that the epidemic is already causing regression and social involution in Africa. This harrowing perspective compels the reader to ask whether the earlier stories of local ingenuity will be enough in the face of this catastrophe.

Along with its emphasis on local capacities and resilience, this volume tends to view donors, international organisations and global processes with scepticism. This framing, however, leads the book to oversell the potential for African peacekeeping and regional organisations, and to miss some of the ways that processes of globalisation are shaping Africa. There is little on human migration and remittances, the politics of plunder, or on how new technologies (text-messaging, for example) are being used in innovative ways.

Towards a New Map of Africa concludes with an ‘Agenda for Action’ that is put forth as a rough sketch map with a few landmarks to aid the traveller, rather than a final statement on what needs to be done. The recommendations are addressed to actors at a range of levels, from African civil society, African governments, donors and international organisations, and non-governmental organisations. For symmetry, and in keeping with the balance sheet character of this volume, a ‘difficult dozen’ challenges to sustainable human development are put beside a ‘durable dozen’ strengths and resources on which Africans may draw. Many of the recommendations are not drawn explicitly from the earlier chapters, and some represent very general aspirations for more regional cooperation or greater attention to needs at the grassroots.

In the end, this volume will not provide the new map to guide the next twenty years of research and policy debates. Its value derives instead from its insistence on highlighting local innovations and resilience, while recognising the terrible challenges that face the continent.