In this book, Nina Sylvanus tells a captivating story of global trade and cross-cultural aesthetics in West Africa, showing how a group of Togolese women—through the making and circulation of wax cloth—became influential agents of taste and history. Traveling deep into the shifting terrain of textile manufacture, design, and trade, she follows wax cloth around the world and through time to unveil its critical role in colonial and postcolonial patterns of exchange and value production....

In-depth examination of the inherent tensions and dynamics of transport corridors in Africa: between short-term optics and long-term durability; between regional integration and national interest; between the facilitation of trade and the generation of corridor revenue. The image of the corridor, a central pathway of road and rail carving its way through Africa's interior, has guided the coordination of transport and trade developments on the continent in recent decades. E...