Suffice it to say that one should not turn to ESPN for rugby coverage. Nonetheless this preview should at least give Americans some sense of the favorites heading into this year's World Cup in France. The headline, “All Blacks, Les Bleus and Wallabies are the favorites” is a little misleading. New Zealand, France, and Australia […]
In this week's New York Times Book Review, John Donnelly, who covers global health and the environment for The Boston Globe, has written a favorable review of Helen Epstein's The Invisible Cure: Africa, the West, and the Fight Against AIDS. An important book on a vital topic, The Invisible Cure posits that the best solutions to the […]
Two months after taking office after a disputed election fraught with irregularities, Nigerian President Umaru Yar'Adua finally announced the formation of his cabinet yesterday after weeks of horse trading with the Senate, which has to approve the selections. It is difficult to discern whether this represents good news or bad in oft-troubled Nigeria. On the plus side, […]
The International AIDS Society (IAS) conference, the biggest of its kind in the world, just closed in Australia. Its most significant conclusion is that the world must find a way to develop and deliver child-specific, side-effect-free (or limited) drugs to allow children with the disease to survive into adulthood (and perhaps to live to see […]
On Sunday former United Nations Secretary general Kofi Annan gave the fifth annual Nelson Mandela lecture at Madiba's foundation. In his talk Annan entreated African leaders to promote democracy and good governance and to disavow tyranny. It turns out that throughout much of the continent, Africans are already heeding the call for democracy and away from […]
Drought has exacerbated a food shortage which in turn has been exacerbating an HIV/AIDS-fueled health crisis in the tiny Mountain Kingdom of Lesotho. Maseru has declared a state of emergency. And things are probably going to get worse before they get better.
According to Business Report, South African consumer confidence, which has been ongoing for some time, either continues apace or it does not. What this somewhat frustrating contradiction tells us, I think, is that the dismal science is more dismal than science and that consumer confidence is probably a pretty vague matrix to gauge the health […]
For whatever reason, Blake Hounshell at Foreign Policy's “Passport” decided that on Mandela's birthday he needed to write a blog post declaring that “Nelson Mandela is No Saint.” Let's leave aside the fact that no one has actually argued that Mandela is a saint, and so Hounshell is heroically creating a straw man to beat him […]
Nelson Mandela turned 89 today, birthday gifts pile up, and South Africa celebrates. The still vibrant liberation hero and South Africa's first legitimate president still inspires hope, and continues to grow in popularity, whether dealing with his beloved South Africa, advising African leaders, or drawing the support of global football stars at a ceremony on […]
Over at The New Republic James Kirchick (whose work, frankly, I have little use for most of the time) wonders, based on idle comments from Bulawayo's Archbishop Pius Ncube, whether Great Britain should invade Zimbabwe and remove Mugabe. While Kirchick makes some fundamentally (if somewhat obvious) decent points, I’m not certain that an invasion of […]
IRIN has two stories about the movement of human capital in Southern Africa that reveal a region in flux. The first shows how South Africa is trying to stanch the brain drain of skilled and highly educated workers and professionals, particularly in the healthcare profession. The second reveals beleaguered white former Zimbabwean farmers who had lost […]
Cape Town has a perception as a racist city, according to Danny Jordaan, South Africa's Local Organizing Committee CEO for the 2010 World Cup. And he believes that the city (and the country in general) will have to shed that image if the 2010 event is to be a success. As a step in that […]
It doesn't take much to tip the scales toward economic catastrophe for the people southern Africa. A poor harvest followed by a bitterly cold winter means that Swaziland is experiencing some of its worst economic conditions in recent years. Food and medical scarcities, inadequate shelter, and general economic vulnerability have created conditions for a miserable winter for South […]
Not at all surprisingly, the Mugabe government's unilateral price cutting, and crackdown on those who would defy it, has proven to be a short-term palliative and not a long-term solution. Store shelves are empty. Shortages reign. Prices may be low, but no one can buy goods. Producers have stopped producing, store owners have stopped purchasing […]
A couple of items from West Africa caught my eye this morning: Ghana recently discovered oil off of its coast. But oil has usually proven to be a mixed blessing in Africa, bringing with it what has come to be known as the “petro-curse”: Fueling kleptocracy and division, exploiting poor workers for the benefit of […]