ABOUT THE BOOK

This book is the outcome of an International Conference held in Nairobi in March 2014 that was jointly organised by the Indian Ocean Rim Association (IORA) and the Indian Ocean Research Group (IORG), an Observer to IORA. The Conference was sponsored through the Indian Ocean Rim Academic Group (IORAG) and involved academics, diplomats, politicians, bureaucrats, business people, NGOs and others from Africa, from around the Indian Ocean Rim and from elsewhere. It is hoped that it will be the first of many such Conferences and Dialogues designed specifically to describe, discuss, explain and evaluate Indian Ocean Maritime Africa`s changing geo-economic and geopolitical linkages to other Indian Ocean Rim states.

ABOUT Author

Dennis Rumley (Ed) : Dennis Rumley is currently Professor of Indian Ocean Studies, Distinguished Research Fellow, Curtin University, Western Australia, and was formerly Australia`s focal point to the Indian Ocean Rim Academic Group (IORAG). He was appointed as Vice-Chair of the IORAG at the IORA meeting in Bangalore in November 2011 for a period of two years. He has been an editorial board member of various international journals and has published 11 books and more than 130 scholarly papers on political geography and international relations, electoral geography, local government, federalism, Australia`s regional relations, geopolitics, India-Australia relations and the Indian Ocean Region. He is currently Chairperson of the Indian Ocean Research Group (IORG) and is Foundation Chief Editor of its flagship journal, Journal of the Indian Ocean Region. IORG is one of two Observers to IORA. Dennis Rumley edited a major study on Indian Ocean Security which was launched in Canberra by the Australian Deputy Foreign Minister in March 2013 - The Indian Ocean Region: Security, Stability and Sustainability in the 21st Century, Melbourne: Australia India Institute, which is available online at: http://www.aii.unimelb.edu.au/sites/default/files/IndianOceanSecurityTaskforce_0.pdf He has very recently co-edited Indian Ocean Regionalism, London: Routledge, with Timothy Doyle, and has had republished as Volume 15 in a new Routledge Library Editions: Political Geography series his co-edited book with Julian Minghi, The Geography of Border Landscapes.