# Global Africa Today  
The end of the twentieth and beginning of the twenty-first century witnessed the complete liberation of Africa from direct colonialism. The newly launched African Union created a sixth region for 'Africans from the diaspora'. All these developments open new opportunities and pose difficult challenges. These are the issues dealt with in Volume XI, Global Africa Today. It is a very difficult foray into the 'history of present times' or 'immediate history'. The distancing that allows for a serene writing of history is missing from the picture. Historians have to write history while being involved in it.  
The volume is divided into three sections. The first explores the current trends in contemporary historical scholarship and the theoretical and epistemological conditions for writing the history of Global Africa today, the second deals with the specific situation of Africa in the contemporary world and the third and last focuses on challenges to Global Africa at the turn of the third millennium.