A Good Man in Africa
1994 film by Bruce Beresford
A Good Man in Africa is a 1994 comedy-drama film, based on William Boyd's 1981 novel A Good Man in Africa and directed by Bruce Beresford. The film starred Colin Friels, Sean Connery, John Lithgow, Joanne Whalley, Diana Rigg and Louis Gossett Jr.
Plot
Morgan Leafy is a British diplomat living in Kinjanja, an African nation which has recently become independent from British rule. Arthur Fanshawe, a new diplomat eager to leave Africa, learns that Kinjanja sits on top of a huge oil reserve. Unfortunately, Morgan is too preoccupied with alcohol and women to know what to do with the oil. To make matters worse, a woman is struck by lightning on the British compound, creating a tense political situation with the Kinjanja government.
Cast
Colin Friels as Morgan Leafy
Joanne Whalley-Kilmer as Celia Adekunle
Sean Connery as Dr. Alex Murray
John Lithgow as Arthur Fanshawe
Louis Gossett Jr. as Prof. Sam Adekunle
Diana Rigg as Chloe Fanshawe
Maynard Eziashi as Friday, Leafy's Houseman
Sarah-Jane Fenton as Priscilla Fanshawe
Jackie Mofokeng as Hazel
Themba Ndaba as Kojo
David Phetoe as Isaiah
Production
In July 1992 Beresford wrote to his colleague and friend Sue Milliken he had Boyd's draft and was "passionately keen to make" the movie.
“A Good Man in Africa” enters the record as 1994 film by Bruce Beresford. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Good, Africa and film can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 8, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q300423. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1994, 1981 and 1992.
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This entry incorporates text from “A Good Man in Africa” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.