Most recent works and commentary focus on the "challenges" of modern globalization for the various nations of Africa, discounting the centuries-old influence that globalization has had on the continent, and vice versa. This volume attempts to remedy that lack, exploring the influence of globalization on the continent and the contributions that Africans have made to the wider world over the past five hundred years. Highlighting five crucial moments in the development of globalization in Africa - the slave trade, European colonization, the two world wars, decolonization, and the successes and limits of globalization in post-colonial Africa - in order to show how outside forces contributed to the development of Africa, and how components of African culture and society spread to the larger world, the volume poses the fundamental question: Why does poverty and lack of development remain so widespread in Africa while other developing regions prosper?