Here are (relatively) comment free links to developing stories across Africa:
It appears at least possible that terrorist organizations are recruiting Somalis living in the United States. (See also here.)
Dozens died in unrest in Madagascar last week.
A little more than a week ago I questioned what I saw as a too-hopeful narrative developing around the democratic Republic of the Congo. It looks like I may have been right. Trust me when I say I am not gratified by this and wish I was dead wrong. Let us hope that those with the voice to do so continue to urge action in the DRC.
Why am I not especially reassured that Libyan President Muammar Gaddafi has been elected the new leader of the African Union? Probably because I have never really trusted his particular form of Pan-Africanism, which I have never really believed to represent the interests of the mass of Africans, and which I have always seen as an opportunistic Pan -Arabism couched in Africanist rhetoric. Ask the people of Chad, for example, if Gaddafi has much represented their interests.
Let me end on a more positive note: Amidst a former illegal dump in South Africa's Soweto has emerged a public park. Public space may not seem to rank up there with other issues of justice and reconciliation and redressing poverty and inequality and crime and all of the other things that post-Apartheid South Africa has to deal with, but public spaces matter, and not only as symbolism.