Join us for a book launch and drinks with the authors, and Professor Christopher Clapham (Cambridge) as discussant: Why Comrades Go To War: Liberation Politics and the Outbreak of Africa’s Deadliest Conflict. This talk features the author Harry Verhoeven – an Assistant Professor at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, Qatar – and Philip Roessler – an Assistant Professor in the Department of Government at the College of William and Mary, USA , where he also directs the Center for African Development. The book offers a novel theoretical account of Africa’s Great War, arguing that the overthrow of Mobutu proved a Pyrrhic victory because the protagonists ignored the philosophy of Julius Nyerere, the father of Africa’s liberation movements: they put the gun before the unglamorous but essential task of building the domestic and regional political institutions and organisational structures necessary to consolidate peace after revolution.