AUTHOR Philip Briggs (e phil@philipbriggs.com) has been exploring the highways, byways and backwaters of Africa since 1986, when he spent several months backpacking on a shoestring from Nairobi to Cape Town. In 1991, he wrote the Bradt guide to South Africa, the first such guidebook to be published internationally after the release of Nelson Mandela. Over the next decade, Philip wrote a series of pioneering Bradt guides to destinations that were then – and in some cases still are – otherwise practically uncharted by the travel publishing industry. These included the first dedicated guidebooks to Tanzania, Uganda, Ethiopia, Malawi, Mozambique, Ghana and Rwanda, all of which have been updated for several subsequent editions. More recently, Philip wrote the first guidebook to Somaliland, published by Bradt in 2012, as well as new guidebooks to The Gambia and Suriname. He still spends at least four months on the road every year, usually accompanied by his wife, the travel photographer Ariadne Van Zandbergen, and spends the rest of his time battering away at a keyboard in the sleepy South African village of Wilderness.
CONTRIBUTER Janice Booth's career has included stage management, archaeology, compiling puzzle magazines, travelling, editing Bradt guides and co-writing Bradt guides to south and east Devon. Since the first edition of this guide she has lectured and written about Rwanda and led tours there.
UPDATER Sean Connolly first travelled to Africa as a student in 2008, and since then has been returning to the continent regularly to research, teach English or simply to soak up the ambiance in Africa's countless little-visited corners. When he's not discussing verb tenses, diplomatic recognition or the merits of camel meat, you may find him riding in the back of a grain truck, sampling questionable local delicacies or seeking out a country's funkiest records. Raised in Chicago, Sean has been poring over maps since before he could read them, and has updated or contributed to the Bradt guides to Somaliland, Malawi, Mozambique, Ghana, Uruguay and Sierra Leone, along with the 6th edition of Bradt Rwanda. He's also the author of the first Bradt guide to Senegal.