Africa is failing. Africa is rising. Africa is betraying its citizens. Africa is a place of starvation, corruption, stupidity. African economies are soaring faster than any other on earth. Africa is squandering its bountiful resources. Africa is a roadmap for global development. Africa is turbulent. Africa is stabilising. Africa is doomed. Africa is the future.On the ground, all of these pronouncements prove equally true and false, as South African journalists Richard Poplak and Kevin Bloom discover on their 9-year-roadtrip through the paradoxical continent they call home. From pillaged mines in Zimbabwe to the creation of an economic marketplace in Ethiopia, from Namibia's entrepreneurial middle class to the technological challenges facing 21st Century Nollywood, from China's investment in Botswana to the rush for resources in the Congo, and from the birth of Africa's newest country, South Sudan, to the ongoing conflict in CAR, here are eight adventures on the trail of a new Africa.