It seems that Evilastus Karonda’s re-election as the Secretary General of Namibia’s largest trade union federation at its fifth Congress which ended on Sunday September 5 in the capital Windhoek is a victory for the Namibian workers. Apparently, Karonda’s championship of bread and butter issues affecting the workers earned him enmity among his colleagues in […]
Foreign Policy recently published its 2010 Failed States Index. Perhaps not surprisingly Africa on the whole does not do well. Of the bottom 20 slots, Africa has twelve, including the dubious honor of a clean sweep of the worst five, as well as slots 21 through 23. That’s right — Somalia, Chad, Sudan, Zimbabwe, and […]
The National Union of Namibian Workers (NUNW), an umbrella body of affiliated Namibian workers unions in public and private sector, is winding down its national congress in the capital under the theme of “Back to Basics.” Back to basics is a befitting theme because the congress is taking place at a time when Namibia’s largest […]
Calm has followed chaos in Mozambique. Whether it is going to last we don’t know. But the more salient question is whether or not food shortages across the world are going to lead to similar uprisings. Much of the worst of the global economic crisis has actually missed Africa, in part, at least, because of […]
A significant hike in the price of bread and other commodities led to mass protests in Mozambique’s capital, Maputo, which in turn led to trigger-happy police opening fire on crowds of people. The official stance of the state appears to be the the protests were illegal, which in addition to being absurd in and of […]
A riot over price hikes in Mozambique has brought services to a halt in the capital Maputo. At least six people have been reported dead, and hundred more injured when the police fired shots to disperse crowds of people protesting in the streets on Wednesday. The protesters barricaded roads, hurled rocks at cars, set ablaze […]
It is exceedingly rare for an event in Africa to be met with near-universal acclaim. But the approval of Kenya’s new constitution seems to qualify. Kenyans are celebrating the news, in which they played a part by their participation in the referendum to approve the constitution. President Mwai Kibaki, who shares some of the blame […]
This time in the Kingdom of Swaziland as Eastern and Southern Africa heads of state and Government convene for the 14th Summit of the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa, starting tomorrow September 1, 2010. Sounds familiar? A little over two weeks ago, Southern Africa heads of state and government met in Windhoek for […]
It looks like the major public sector strike in South Africa might be coming to an end. The government has upped its offer and the unions seem set to accept. There is a prisoner’s dilemma element of every labor action, of course, but at the end of nearly every one across the globe not ended […]
Last week the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights long-awaited mapping report on the crisis in the Democratic Republic of Congo leaked. In it Rwanda is implicated in a range of horrible crimes, the most grimly ironic being genocide. Texas in Africa (welcome back!) has a fantastic response.
If you are a company from the overlooked continent, how do you penetrate the international market? For 40 emerging African Challengers, a new breed of ambitious African companies, the answer is to imitate a model based on multinationals from China, India, Brazil, and Russia, referred as “New Global Challengers”, who have recently taken advantage of […]
In the United States Ronald Reagan used to be referred to as “The Teflon President” because no matter what befell his administration or what mistakes he made or what failures he had, nothing seemed to stick. It appears that South African President Jacob Zuma has his own non-stick sheen. Despite myriad personal controversies and political […]
Stories that have accumulated on my desk over the last few days with commentary as apt: Increasingly ANC Youth League (ANC-YL) president Julius Malema finds himself in President Jacob Zuma’s bad graces. And this, of course, is shorthand for the increasingly tendentious relationship between the ANC and the Youth League. This is yet another of […]
Johannesburg (52), Nairobi (56), and Lagos (59) made the Foreign Policy magazine’s 2010 Global Cities Index. The index provides a comprehensive ranking of global cities’ performance by measuring their influence on the world stage, ranging from the size of the economy, politics to culture. Not a surprising choice here, but personally I find the three […]