From the Publisher

By Elizabeth P. Valk

Of all the continents for a foreign correspondent to cover, Africa, with its wars, hostile terrain and often impossible communications, is the most difficult. TIME Nairobi bureau chief Marguerite Michaels sums it up: "Getting the story in Africa is only one-half of the job of a journalist. Getting to the story, more often than not, is the real challenge." Michaels, one of four Africa-based TIME correspondents to contribute to this week's cover story, has met that challenge in many ways. Perhaps the most dramatic was her visit last year to Eritrea, which had just won a 30-year war of independence from Ethiopia and had promptly shut down the airport and all other means of communication with the outside world. Michaels flew to neighboring Djibouti, chartered an Arab dhow to the Red Sea port of Mesewa and hitched a ride for the final 71 miles to the Eritrean capital, Asmara.

TIME Cairo correspondent Bill Dowell faced comparable difficulties when he had to travel to Liberia to co-report our cover story. With Monrovia's main airport still under rebel control following the bloody civil war that ousted President Samuel Doe, Dowell flew in on a tiny Cessna that landed on a , makeshift airstrip. Nearby lay the charred remains of a Russian-built transport plane that had failed to make such a landing a few days earlier. Dowell also visited Francophone Ivory Coast, Senegal and Mali. Michaels, meanwhile, fanned out as far afield as Zambia, Zaire, Burkina Fasso, Nigeria, Benin and Togo.

Further coverage was provided by Cape Town correspondent Peter Hawthorne and Johannesburg bureau chief Scott MacLeod. In the United States, meanwhile, former TIME senior editor Jack White compiled a black American's view of Africa and the impact of the evolving African-American lobby.

The main story was written by New York City-based senior writer Lance Morrow, for whom Africa has been a longtime passion. Morrow has made two trips there: in 1986, to write a cover story on African animals, and in 1988, to explore on foot the Mathews Range of northern Kenya. Despite Africa's immense problems, Morrow and our correspondents hold deep, largely positive feelings toward it -- not as a lost continent but as one yet to be found. "If I could arrange it, I think I would live there," says Morrow. He has even pinpointed the spot: "Probably around the Great Rift Valley, northwest of Mount Kenya on the Laikipia plateau." He could do worse.