Three little-known facts: Africa is now the world's fastest growing continent, with average GDP growth of 5.5 percent in the past ten years. Malaria deaths have declined by 54 percent since 2001. Nigeria produces more movies than America does. This is the story of today's Africa - one often overshadowed by the dire headlines. Traveling from his ancestral home in Uganda, East Africa, to the booming, if chaotic, new democracies of West Africa and down to the "Silicon Savannahs" of Kenya and Rwanda, Ashish J. Thakkar introduces an Africa that few Westerners know exists. Far from being a place in need of pity and aid, we see a continent undergoing a remarkable transformation. We meet a new generation of ambitious, tech-savvy young Africans who are developing everything from bamboo bicycles to iPhone apps; artists, filmmakers and architects thriving with newfound freedom and opportunity; and hyper-educated members of the diaspora who have returned to Africa after years abroad to open companies and take up positions in government. They all tell the same story: twenty-first-century AFrica offers them more opportunity than the West. And the rest of the world is finally starting to notice. Drawing from his own experiences as a 15-year-old entrepreneur, his family's long history in East Africa, and the wild ride of building the family business, Mara Group, into an international powerhouse, Ashish reveals the African miracle unfolding right under our noses. -- from back cover.