Book excerpt: Following on from the first 2 books in the series, Sedimentary Basins of the World, which covered Chinese Sedimentary Basins (Volume 1) and South Pacific Sedimentary Basins (Volume 2), comes Volume 3, on African Basins. Africa covers a larger land area than the USA, Europe, India and the ASEAN nations put together. It is rich in natural resources, including oil, gas, coal and nearly every metalliferous mineral. Yet Africa is still one of the least explored continents. This book brings together in one volume, concise reviews of basins previously documented in a vast array of diffuse literature. It also contains some of the first detailed accounts of several basins which have never before been described in such depth. These include the onshore Owambo, Iullemmeden, and Sudanese rift basins, and the offshore basins of southern Africa. The contributions are by authors, and teams of authors, with great knowledge and experience of the basins that they describe. The thirteen chapters are arranged in 3 parts covering North Africa, Central Africa and Southern Africa and the book is illustrated by maps, cross-sections, stratigraphic sections and seismic lines. Each chapter includes a comprehensive bibliography and the book concludes with a subject index. For academic geologists researching the geology of Africa, and for industrial geologists seeking natural resources within African sedimentary rocks, this book is an invaluable source of information.