Lonely Planet West Africa

The product was in the quality advertised.

The information is somewhat dated, but gives an otherwise thorough discourse on West Africa up to about ten years ago. Does not cover South Africa, Namibia or Morocco. I used it for a West African cruise between Cape Town and Spain, and it was great for the history of the area. Intrepid travelers will find the sections of these nations away from the coastal cities interesting to read, but not up to date enough for interior travel. An aside—cruise ship passengers arriving in Togo do not need an advance visa—your ship will take care of it on arrival. Namibia and Ghana however will require a visa before disembarkation at their ports in 2025 at least.

I used this book to select a hotel in Lome, TOGO and was quite disappointed. I think the authors used outdated site visit information...in general the information is quite superficial

West Africa is one of the great emerging tourist destinations of the world. Great beaches, lively cities, dynamic culture, and still intact wildlife with improving accommodations, plus modest costs and good accessibility from Europe make this part of the world an only lightly discovered gem. Then why this desultory and sketchy guidebook? When I first read Lonely Planet's 1993 West Africa guidebook I was amazed at the detail and insight. The new edition doesn't even provide details on visa regulations, and the visitor info is brief and limited. LP must be struggling with how to compete with TripAdvisor, etc. The answer is to provide more authorial insights and detail, not less. Bradt has grasped this with its many detailed West Africa guides (though many countries, notably Guinea, Guinea Bissau, and Benin are dated or absent). But Lonely Planet seems to have lost its edge. The new West Africa edition is not worth the money.

The book is much older than i expeced

I have an older edition (2006) of this book, bought for a trip back then to Mali and Senegal. When I dusted it off to prepare for a January 2020 trip to Côte d'Ivoire I found 35 small print pages of useful information, particularly on cultural matters and history. Since the bitter civil war was underway when the history section was written, I decided to look for an updated guidebook. The current version of this Lonely Planet West Africa guide is a mere skeleton of the 2006 edition--at least with respect to Côte d'Ivoire, with only 13 pages. If I was going a year from now I would wait for the 2020 Bradt Guide on Côte d'Ivoire due out September 2020.