Books for Adults

Everything a small poultry farm needs, from brooding day-old chicks to selling eggs and birds at festival time. Local and improved breeds, housing that copes with heat and rain, feed you can mix yourself, the vaccination calendar, and how to cost a batch in naira.

Tatashe, shombo, ata rodo and tomatoes, grown season by season in the south and the north. Nursery beds, transplanting, watering on a budget, the pests that ruin a crop and how to stop them, and getting the harvest to market before prices fall.

Keeping West African Dwarf goats, Red Sokoto, Yankasa and Uda well. Housing, dry-season feeding, breeding and kidding, the illnesses to watch for, and planning your flock so it is ready when Sallah demand peaks.

Catfish and tilapia in earthen ponds, concrete tanks and tarpaulin tanks. Choosing a system, buying good fingerlings, feeding without wasting money, keeping the water right, and a full budget for one cycle from stocking to sale.

From an idea to a registered, paying business. Testing what customers will buy, pricing so you make money, registering with CAC, tax under the new rules, keeping books, finding finance, selling online, and spotting the scams.

Raising giant African land snails for food and profit. Pens, feeding, breeding, the dry season and selling.

A small rabbitry that pays its way: hutches, feeding, breeding, keeping rabbits healthy, and selling meat.

Top-bar hives you can build yourself, handling bees safely, harvesting honey and wax, and selling them.

Housing, feeding, breeding and selling pigs, with the biosecurity that keeps African swine fever out.

Growing cassava well and turning it safely into garri, fufu and flour for the family and the market.

Ugu, efo, okra, peppers and moringa: a garden that feeds the household all year, with surplus to sell.

Oyster mushrooms grown on sawdust and straw in a small room or shed, from spawn to sale.

Making and selling palm oil, groundnut oil, shea butter and snacks: equipment, hygiene, packaging and registration.

How tropical soils work, and how to feed them with compost, manure and cover crops for better harvests.

Foundations, walls and roofs that stand up to the rainy season, with earth blocks, sandcrete and fired brick.

Collecting rainwater, choosing and keeping tanks, and making sure the water your family drinks is safe.

Working out what you need, choosing panels, batteries and inverters, and avoiding the mistakes that cost money.

Simple money records that show whether your business is really making a profit.

Selling through WhatsApp, Instagram and online marketplaces, taking payment, delivering, and avoiding scams.

Sesame, hibiscus, shea and cashew: finding buyers, meeting standards and getting the first shipment out.

A year of farm records in one book: crops, poultry, goats and sheep, fish, and the money in and out. Worked examples show how to fill in every page, and the year-end sheet tells you what made a profit.

A year of flock records: birds in and out, feed, eggs, vaccinations, costs and sales.

Pond and tank records for every cycle: stocking, feeding, water checks, losses and harvest.

Daily sales, stock and money for small shops and traders, with a monthly summary.

The great upside-down trees of Africa and Madagascar, photographed across the seasons: bare and silver in the dry months, in leaf and flower in the rains, and lined up along the Avenue of the Baobabs.

Red dunes at Sossusvlei, the dead camel-thorn trees of Deadvlei, and shipwrecks on the fog-bound Skeleton Coast: the oldest desert on earth in photographs.

Giza, Saqqara and the temples of the Nile, in modern photographs and in the vivid colour prints made by travellers in the 1890s.

Savannah and forest elephants at waterholes, on the move and with their young. A photographic portrait of the largest animal on land.

Mosi-oa-Tunya, the Smoke That Thunders: the falls in flood and in the dry season, the gorge, the rainbows and the bridge that crosses it.

The Great Mosque of Djenné, the mosques of Timbuktu and the towers of Agadez, built of earth and replastered by whole towns every year. Some of the most remarkable buildings in the world.

Lesser flamingos in their hundreds of thousands, turning the soda lakes of Kenya and Tanzania pink.

Dunes, oases, mountain plateaus, caravans and ancient rock art across the largest hot desert in the world.

Table Mountain, the Cape of Good Hope, the penguins of Boulders Beach and the flowering fynbos of the Cape.

The great walls of Great Zimbabwe, the standing stones of Aksum and the rock-cut churches of Lalibela: Africa's ancient builders, in photographs.

Snow on the equator: Kilimanjaro, Mount Kenya and the Rwenzori, with the giant plants that grow nowhere else.

Cloth, peppers, yams, fish and everything else: the colour and bustle of West Africa's great markets.

Egypt, Algeria and Tunisia as travellers saw them in the 1890s, in rare hand-coloured photochrom prints.

Gorillas, chimpanzees and bonobos in their forest homes: a photographic portrait of our closest relatives.

The carved doors and narrow streets of Stone Town, dhows in the harbour and the spice farms of the islands.

Lilac-breasted rollers, carmine bee-eaters, sunbirds and turacos: Africa's brightest birds, in photographs.

Jollof rice, egusi soup, suya, moi moi and the everyday cooking of Nigerian homes, with a photograph of every dish.

The empires of Mali and Songhai, the Oyo and Benin kingdoms and the Asante: a thousand years of West African history.

The symbols of the Akan people of Ghana, each one drawn clearly, with its name, its meaning and the proverb behind it.

Proverbs from fifty African peoples, with the language each one comes from and what it means.

Suya, puff-puff, kelewele, akara and the other snacks sold on West African streets, made at home.

Injera, wat and the coffee ceremony: everyday Ethiopian cooking and the way a meal is shared.

Kente, mud cloth, adinkra and Ndebele house painting: patterns from across Africa to colour.

Large-print word searches on Africa's places, animals, food and history.

The phrases you hear every day in Nigeria, with what they mean and how to use them.

Shea, baobab, moringa, néré, iroko and other trees: how to recognise them, what they are used for and how to grow them.