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The Books

Sovereign: The Story of Power

A narrative history for each of Africa's 54 nations, from independence to today. Books marked Available can be bought now on Amazon.

Each volume tells a country's post-independence story through its leaders — the coups, the constitutions, the revolutions, the elections and the people who lived through them. Deep research, primary sources, and the latest data. The Sovereign editions on Amazon are in English so far.

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Sovereign: The Story of Power in Nigeria — cover

Sovereign: The Story of Power in Nigeria

Nigeria · 1960–2026 · Kindle e-book · in English

Africa’s giant, still learning to walk on its own feet.

At midnight on 30 September 1960, at the Race Course in Lagos, the Union Jack came down and the green-white-green flag went up. Nigeria began its life as the largest nation in Africa, a federation of three regions that were stronger than its center. Its first prime minister, Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, said the country had “awaited it with increasing impatience”. What followed was sixty-six years of trying to prove an old remark wrong, that Nigeria was “a mere geographical expression”: two coups in 1966, a civil war that killed perhaps a million people, twenty-nine years of military rule, the annulment of the freest election in the country’s history, and, in 2015, a sitting president who lost and telephoned the man who had beaten him.

Sovereign: The Story of Power in Nigeria tells that story as a story — chronological, human and sourced — and reads it for the strategies its leaders chose, in seven acts from The Fragile Federation to Change and Renewed Hope, up to 12 September 2026, when the electoral commission published the final list of eighteen candidates for the presidential election of 16 January 2027.

Inside

  • A prologue on 31 March 2015: the telephone call that conceded defeat before the result was declared.
  • The deep past, from the Nok terracottas and the bronzes of Ife and Benin to the Sokoto Caliphate, the sack of Benin in 1897 and the road to independence.
  • Leadership read as strategy: each ruler’s playbook named, the African peers who stood at the same fork, and nine Lessons in Leadership argued from the record.
  • 109 source notes, a reader’s guide of 146 entries and an epilogue on the latest official data to mid-October 2026.

A clear, sourced introduction for anyone who wants to understand Nigeria and how the largest democracy in Africa set the precedent that a president who loses goes home.

Read it on Kindle →
Sovereign: The Story of Power in Ghana — cover

Sovereign: The Story of Power in Ghana

Ghana · 1957–2026 · Kindle e-book · in English

The nation that always goes first.

At midnight on 6 March 1957, Kwame Nkrumah stood before a weeping crowd in Accra and declared Ghana free — the first colony of Black Africa south of the Sahara to break its chains. What followed was a sixty-nine-year experiment watched by a whole continent: a founding father toppled while abroad, fifteen years of coups, a flight lieutenant who seized power twice and then stepped down, and a democracy that learned to change governments without firing a shot.

Sovereign: The Story of Power in Ghana tells that story as a story — chronological, human, impossible to put down. From Nkrumah’s political kingdom to Rawlings’s revolution, from Kufuor’s oil strike to the 2022 default, and from Mahama’s comeback to the day in July 2026 when the IMF closed the book on Ghana’s bailout.

Inside

  • A prologue on the ten days of December 2000 and January 2001, when Rawlings, who had seized power twice, handed it to the opposition — a precedent Ghana went on to repeat.
  • The deep past: the forest kingdoms, the Golden Stool of Asante, the castles and the slave trade, cocoa, conquest and the road to independence.
  • Read for strategy: each leader’s way of governing named, the decisions that defined it, and the African peers who chose otherwise.
  • 98 source notes, a reader’s guide of 143 entries and an epilogue on the latest official data to October 2026.

A clear-eyed, richly told introduction for anyone who wants to understand Ghana, West Africa, and how a nation learns to lose well.

Read it on Kindle →
Sovereign: The Story of Power in Kenya — cover

Sovereign: The Story of Power in Kenya

Kenya · 1963–2026 · Kindle e-book · in English

Harambee: let us all pull together.

At midnight on 11–12 December 1963, before a crowd of some quarter of a million in Nairobi, the Union Jack came down and the flag of Kenya went up. Jomo Kenyatta, the man the British had called “the leader to darkness and death”, was now prime minister of an independent state, and he asked the settlers to stay. What followed was sixty-three years of argument over what freedom meant: a founding father’s Harambee state, a one-party state and an attempted coup, election violence that killed more than a thousand people, the first annulment of a presidential election by a court in Africa, and a generation that read a Finance Bill clause by clause and marched.

Sovereign: The Story of Power in Kenya tells that story as a story — chronological, human and sourced — and reads it for the strategies its leaders chose, in five acts from Mzee and the Harambee State to The Hustler’s Republic, up to 30 September 2026, when President William Ruto and the industrialist Aliko Dangote broke ground at Lamu for the Dangote East African refinery.

Inside

  • A prologue on 1 September 2017, when Kenya’s Supreme Court annulled a sitting president’s re-election, and he obeyed the ruling.
  • The deep past: stone tools made 3.3 million years ago at Lake Turkana, the stone towns of the Swahili coast, the Iron Snake railway, Mau Mau and the road to Uhuru.
  • Leadership read as strategy: each president named by his playbook, and how the same choices played out in Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Zambia, Malawi and Ghana.
  • 100 source notes, a reader’s guide of 135 entries and an epilogue on the latest official data to mid-October 2026.

A clear, sourced introduction for anyone who wants to understand Kenya, East Africa, and how a country’s presidents learned to leave.

Read it on Kindle →
Sovereign: The Story of Power in South Africa — cover

Sovereign: The Story of Power in South Africa

South Africa · 1994–2026 · Kindle e-book · in English

The miracle, the capture — and the winter the lights stayed on.

In April 1994, South Africans of every race queued for miles to vote together for the first time, and Nelson Mandela went from 27 years in prison to the presidency of the country that had jailed him. The world called it a miracle. Three decades later the Rainbow Nation ran the most unequal economy on Earth — and its democracy had survived AIDS denialism, the capture of the state and the loss of the liberation movement’s majority.

Sovereign: The Story of Power in South Africa tells that story as a story — chronological, human, impossible to put down — in five acts, from The Miracle and the Saint (Mandela) to The New Dawn (Ramaphosa), through the coalition government of 2024 to 31 August 2026, when the country came through its first full winter without load-shedding.

Inside

  • A prologue: fourteen hours in Cape Town on 14 June 2024, when the ANC, short of a majority for the first time, made its old opposition a partner in government.
  • The deep past: Blombos Cave and San rock art, Mapungubwe, a hundred years of frontier, the Reef, apartheid, the armed struggle and the secret talks that led to 1994.
  • The strategy behind the story: every president’s playbook named, each choice set beside the same choice in Botswana, Kenya, Namibia, Nigeria, Rwanda and Zimbabwe.
  • 112 source notes, a reader’s guide of 219 entries and an epilogue on the newest official figures to 15 October 2026.

A clear-eyed, richly told introduction for anyone who wants to understand how Africa’s most industrialized country tests — and keeps — its democracy.

Read it on Kindle →