Yamikani Ndasauka - Addiction in South and East Africa: Interdisciplinary Approaches

Cover illustration: Marina Lohrbach_shutterstock.com

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG

The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

This work is an interdisciplinary volume that investigates addiction in Africa, particularly in South and East Africa. The contributors of this volume are experts in different fields including psychology, chemistry, biology, African philosophy, ethics, literature, anthropology and cultural studies. The chapters are mainly dependent on original research given that there is not much that has been written on the subject of addiction in Africa. The book has therefore responded to the gap of knowledge on addiction in Africa.

Apart from the provision of knowledge, the book has discussed and attempted to provide solutions to specific issues regarding drug abuse and addiction, alcohol abuse and addiction, and sex addiction. Drug and alcohol abuse have been on the rise in Africa and have proved to be hazardous for the African continent. Among the different causes of deaths in Africa, abuse and addiction have led to premature deaths, mainly among the youths. Similarly, sex addiction has negatively affected development in Africa, due to its role in increasing sexually transmitted diseases, such as HIV/AIDS and related diseases.

The information in this edited volume is suitable for a broad category of readers, including both academics and non-academics. The book will be a good source of reference for different university students (undergraduate and post-graduate) across disciplines, researchers in various fields (in research centres), organisations working with the youth (such as World Health Organisation and UNESCO), psychologists, philosophers, linguists, cultural critiques, public health practitioners and legal practitioners.

It is with great pleasure that we consider this work as providing a genuine background for any further research on addiction in the south, east and other parts of Africa. It is further opening a possible dialogue with the studies of addiction that were and are currently being done in different parts of the world.

We thank all contributors for making this work possible. We also thank Professor Richard Tambulasi, the principal of Chancellor College, and Dr. Japhet Bakuwa, the dean of Faculty of Humanities, for allowing us some days off to put together the chapters of the book. Finally, a huge thanks should go to members of Philosophy Department at Chancellor College for encouraging us as we undertook this project.