Paul Kenyon is a renowned BBC journalist who's worked on various hard-hitting current affairs strands, not least the BBC's Panorama. He's someone whose work I've long admired. When I saw he had written a book on the dictators who've wreaked havoc throughout Africa, I was keen to read it.

Dictatorland is certainly well written and split into four parts, each corresponding to the "resource curses" which allowed brutal thugs to seize and keep power - gold, oil, chocolate and modern slavery -  he troops out a succession of tyrants and their horrific idiosyncrasies for his readership to gawp at.

One of the strengths of Dictatorland is how the author demonstrates that Africa, a continent rich in natural resources, was uniquely placed for such misrule. First the colonial empires, and later those who replaced them, had untold wealth at their fingertips and thus had no need to consider the wishes, or even the needs, of the populace. The world's thirst for gold, diamonds and cocoa ensured that brutal misrule was tolerated at best, actively facilitated at worst, by the international community. 

That said, there are a number of flaws to this book. While the author does give the background of colonialism and does demonstrate how the colonial rulers abused their colonies, the lion's share of the narrative focuses on the dictators that came after. I felt that the link between the two was missing somewhat. The brutalism of colonialism and how it stunted civic and political development; the arbitrary division of the continent into artificial states which often lumped hostile ethnic groups together; just how actively the Western powers turned a blind eye to the dictators' behaviour, was not fully fleshed out.

It is also unclear just how the author selected dictators to appear in the book. As The Economist pointed out in their review, some like Mobutu of Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo), Gaddafi of Libya and Mugabe of Zimbabwe are obvious choices. But why Félix Houphouët-Boigny, the first President of Ivory Coast, and not the far more brutal Idi Amin of Uganda or Jean-Bedel Bokassa of the Central African Republic? On can only presume that Houphouët-Boigny was chosen as he based his rule on the cocoa trade. 

 A final issue, is that while this is a fascinating read, it can also be a little tiring. Reading of the wickedness of dictator after dictator, with no real prognosis for change, is a bit repetitive and blunts the reader's outrage. Reading Dictatorland, one might be forgiven the temptation to write Africa off as hopeless, a continent uniquely susceptible to misrule and oppression. 

That all said, this is a very well written book. Despite my misgivings outlined above, it did keep me turning the page. If you're interested in dictators, what colonialism has reaped, the damaging legacy the European empires left the continent and the misrule that more often than not results when a country's rulers have untold riches at their disposal, then this is an enlightening, if depressing, read.

My knowledge of 20th Century history is spotty at best. There are things I am reasonably well-informed about but large parts of history I have cursory knowledge of. The history of Africa is one of those areas (and even typing this makes me cringe - I have to admit to not knowing a lot about a whole fricking continent) and I was very eager to remedy this. As a starting point this book is absolutely perfect. Paul Kenyon manages to give enough of an overview to situate me to then give enough details to keep my interest.

The book is a reasonably comprehensive history of several countries and manages to also connect these parts to a greater whole that gave me a greater understanding how these different dictatorships happened (or are still happening is some cases). We get a greater look into such varied countries as Zimbabwe, Congo, Libya, Nigeria, Cote d'Ivoire, Ghana, Equatorial Guinea and Eritrea. Paul Kenyon structures his book by way of resources the countries own and how these influenced the histories. Starting with diamonds and gold, continuing with oil, talking about cocoa to then show the weird, tragic case of Eritrea where it is not even known what resources might be found there.

There are some things these countries all have in common: the way in which colonialism wrecked them, the way in which other powers influenced them (often in the way of proxy wars in the Cold War era), and the way in which power corrupted people who could were considered heroes beforehand. It is an endlessly bleak and frustrating history and one that made me think more than once how much people can suck. It is due to Paul Kenyon's wonderful storytelling sensibilities that I managed to keep reading despite the bleak subject matter.

The things that did not quite work for me are probably not fair: for one I sometimes struggled with the structure of the chapters, the timeline was not always very clear and I did not always find the thread connecting these different scenes. However, it is near impossible to tell of history in a neat narrative because history is not neat but rather messy. I would also have liked the sources to be clearer and more extensive. I work in academia and as such I am more used to academic writing which this is not.

Overall, impeccably researched, super readable, important book.

I received an arc of this book courtesy of NetGalley and Head of Zeus in exchange for an honest review.

British journalist Paul Kenyon delivers a compelling slice of contemporary history in Dictatorland. The book looks at the men who led African nations out of colonial exploitation, only to betray their people and enrich themselves. The post-colonial history of countries such as Zimbabwe, Congo, Libya, Nigeria, Cote d'Ivoire, Ghana, Equatorial Guinea and Eritrea are covered, as well as the exploitation of various resources: diamonds, gold, oil, chocolate and slavery.

Kenyon's account of what these men did to their people is chilling and the sheer indifference of Western companies to the human suffering their business causes, to this very day, is horrifying. The rampant greed and savagery on display defies belief, and this is by no means in the past; it continues to this day.

If this book lacks anything, it would be the lack of a unifying theory underlying these horrible histories. Why is post-colonial Africa "Dictatorland"? Why have these savage dictators thrived in some African countries but in others, such as South Africa, similar experiences have not arisen, or at least not to the same degree. However this is still a first-rate piece of journalism and modern history, thoroughly worth the read.

What a fascinating and at the same time sobering, look into several African dictatorships and how they survived and indeed thrived, thanks to western, Russian, Chinese and American backing. 

Paul Kenyon focuses on a few countries including Eritrea where the leader continues to tell his people they are on a permanent war footing and a country that is less accessible than even North Korea. The rise of Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe is covered and like a lot of the dictators covered in the book, their rise to power is often a mix of luck and being in the right place at the right time.

There is a chapter on cocoa/chocolate production and a look at a particularly murky part of the Cadbury history. Oil and diamonds also feature heavily in the history of Africa as the colonial powers sought to exploit these to meet growing demands back home. Of course leaders in the states concerned such as Zaire as was made the most of this and in turn made millions for the dictator/leader and their associates.

Paul Kenyon mixes his own personal travels and interviews with people involved in the various countries covered, as well as drawing on historical sources, to produce a highly readable book, thought provoking book that leaves the reader wanting to know more about how much of Africa has been exploited by some of its own people and outsiders.