Among regions of the world, Africa is more or less unique for its large number of fragile and unstable states, poor governance, explosive social and demographic pressures, and recent hopeful economic and political transitions. This course surveys the big questions, enduring challenges, and leading theories of contemporary African politics and governance. Themes to be explored include contending scholarly perspectives on Africa’s developmental puzzle, the impacts of Western colonialism and major international actors and institutions, neo-patrimonial personalized rule and the criminalization of state authority, current patterns of state-society relations, the resource curse, the drivers of warfare and political violence, ongoing struggles for good democratic governance, and illustrative country case studies.