Philip Briggs (philipbriggs.com) has been exploring the highways, byways and backwaters of Africa since 1986, when he backpacked on a shoestring from Nairobi to Cape Town. He is the world's leading author of guidebooks to African countries, with more than 30 years' experience. In 1991, he wrote South Africa: the Bradt Travel Guide, the first such guidebook to be published internationally after the release of Nelson Mandela. Over the rest of the 1990s, he wrote pioneering Bradt travel guides to countries that were then - and in some cases still are - otherwise practically uncharted by the travel industry. These include the first dedicated guidebooks to Rwanda, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Malawi, Mozambique and Ghana, all of which have run to multiple editions. He has also contributed to 11 African Insight Guides and Eyewitness Guides. When not travelling, he lives in the sleepy South African village of Wilderness.