At Brill’s Joed Elich has taken the publisher’s risk to launch the Yearbook on the African Union. Although looking back at more than 15 years of cooperation with him and the publishing house (on the book series launched by the organisation of European centres of African studies, AEGIS), by no means I took this for granted. I am much obliged that Joed shares my belief in the future of this project. My sincere thanks are also to Franca de Kort who, in her usual unagitated manner, made sure that the Yearbook has come into the world.
My deepfelt thanks go to the members of the editorial board – Linnéa Gelot, Cheryl Hendricks, Gilbert M. Khadiagala, Paul Nugent and Thomas Kwasi Tieku – for keeping an eye on quality and guiding me when necessary. I do appreciate that you are an active editorial board, and I am looking forward to our post-mortem analysis.
Amidst fighting the corona pandemic and building back better African public health systems, Dr John N. Nkengasong found some time to answer my questions on how the continental body and its specialised technical institution, the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC), have dealt with the numerous challenges caused by the pandemic. I would like to thank him wholeheartedly for availing himself. I also would like to thank Sergut Dejene, senior communications officer in the Office of the Director Africa CDC, for handling the interview with the Dr Nkengasong.
The book review section has been managed by Katharina P.W. Döring and Jens Herpolsheimer. I owe them for a great selection of titles and reviewers, and the companionship along this journey. And Forrest Kilimnik has copy-edited with consistency and imagination. Pleasure working with all of you! And as always, all remaining typos and glitches are mine and mine alone.
Convinced that the Yearbook on the African Union will provoke critical responses of various kinds and hopefully also stimulate academic debate, I would be most grateful if these responses could enable the editorial team to improve on the product and contribute to making this endeavour a sustainable and intellectually fruitful one. Any constructive feedback is most welcome at: uengel@uni-leipzig.de
Ulf Engel