New News Out of Africa: uncovering Africa's renaissance Charlayne Hunter-Gault Oxford University Press, 173pp, £12.99

What do you expect from news about Africa? Hunger? Civil war? Aids? As a correspondent for CNN in South Africa, Charlayne Hunter-Gault learned that the media truth is, "if it bleeds, it leads". Out of her experiences emerges New News Out of Africa: uncovering Africa's renaissance, filling the gaps between negative and even more negative African news coverage with a refreshing view of the hopes the continent holds today. Her anecdotes tell of business bosses investing in Aids programmes for their employees, football games between opposing political parties in Zimbabwe, and Ghanaian journalists fighting for just coverage of their continent.

While Hunter-Gault is fundamentally optimistic, she doesn't see the African situation through rose-tinted glasses. Rather than manufacturing "good" news, she has researched and written up the "new" news that we in the west rarely hear. Her accounts, thoughtful and backed by expert research, paint a detailed picture of the problems that Africa is facing. Cramming a whole continent into 173 pages necessitates some short cuts, but Hunter-Gault's vivid journalistic perceptions make her book a gripping read.

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