If you’d read the opinion pages of the newspapers at the time Alec Russell was reporting on Africa for the Financial Times, you will have little use for this book. The only novelty therein, is in how Russell weaves his opinion into the reports he, no doubt, had to revisit countless times for the purposes of compiling this book. There is little new, and Russell’s views are just like the ones that were bandied about before in their currency as news of the day.