In 1973 Koert Lindijer first set foot in the Kenyan capital of Nairobi, at the time a sleepy garden city. Ten years later he went to live there; the beginning of forty years of correspondent work of which Nairobi, now a city of millions, became the beating heart. As an Africa correspondent, Lindijer reports from the trenches with Eritrean rebels and on the genocide in Rwanda. He recounts his friendship with the Maasai, everyday life and how age-old traditions continue to define urban life. He surveys a continent that oscillates between the hopeful protests of assertive youth and the democratic deception of their leaders, between grand economic plans and the arrival of dubious Western NGOs. A Skyscraper on the Savannah is a colorful, empathetic and unflattering portrait of a region that, by trial and error, is emerging from Western domination, becoming self-aware and autonomous - and claiming a place on the world stage.