Stephen M. Magu's research focuses on international political economy, economic development, governance and foreign policy issues as relating to Africa. He is the author of Great Powers and US Foreign Policy towards Africa (2019), Peace Corps and Citizen Diplomacy: Soft Power Strategies in U.S. Foreign Policy (2018) and The Socio-Cultural, Ethnic and Historic Foundations of Kenya's Electoral Violence: Democracy on Fire (2018), and co-editor of Corruption Scandals and their Global Impacts (with Omar Hawthorne, 2018).

Takes an institutional and continental approach to analyzing the major issues in post-colonial Africa

Studies the conditions that made African countries decide to keep the colonial boundaries even though each country hated them

Captures the importance of the early years of independence, especially with decolonization of the remaining countries in southern Africa, the Apartheid government, and Ian Smith's Rhodesia

Chapter 1: The Beginning of a Post-Colonial Foreign Policy in Africa.- Chapter 2: Conceptual Approaches to Foreign Policy and Application to African Countries.- Chapter 3: Politics of Geography, Statehood, Residual Colonization and Territorial Integrity.- Chapter 4: Africa Huru! Complex Events - Cold War, Residual Colonization and Apartheid.- Chapter 5: Nation vs. Continent: Sovereignty, Territorial Integrity and Rebellion.- Chapter 6: Made in Europe: Breaking Nations, Secession Movements and OAU Responses.- Chapter 7: Region or Continent: O/AU Development and Regional Economic Communities.- Chapter 8: Between BRICs' Promise and Past Western Trauma: Whither, Africa?.- Chapter 9. Africa's Post-Colonial Foreign Policy: Assessing History, Imagining the Future.