Shine Your Eye

A prominent British-Nigerian writer’s odyssey through a West Africa now starkly different from that of his youth.

West Africa is at a crossroads. Boasting tremendous natural wealth, its inhabitants are among the world’s poorest. Despite ostensible multi-party democracy, it has suffered coups, conflict and corruption since independence. Where can it go from here?

Journeying along the coast and across the Sahel, from Ghana to Guinea-Bissau, Sierra Leone to Senegal, British-Nigerian writer Adéwálé Májà-Pearce uncovers a restless region on the verge of great change. Visiting fourteen countries—and seeking out the Nigerian diaspora communities in each—he reflects on the dramatic transformations that have shaken these societies since the late 1980s, when he first travelled their roads. From refusing IMF loans to rejecting Western-imposed currencies, West Africa’s diverse, expanding and overwhelmingly young population is conducting a quiet revolution, discarding its European-dominated past and seizing control of its own future. In Nigeria, anti–police brutality demonstrations have challenged an aging elite sustained by colonial enablers who never truly left. And in Côte d’Ivoire, Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger, popular resentment has forced the withdrawal of long-present French troops

Speaking with local journalists and dissident academics, street hawkers and immigration officers, Májà-Pearce brings to life the compelling story of a region at breaking point—as told by West Africans themselves.