Millions of citizens of African countries will go to the polls in Presidential, parliamentary/legislative, state/provincial, and local elections in 2014. We will surely cover many of those here at the FPA. Here is an early preview of which elections are happening where (as of January 8) with brief commentary on several of them: Southern Africa: […]
This is something rare. Knowledge of a rapidly deteriorating situation in Africa and a somewhat timely, actual action by those in the world with the power to intervene. The situation is in the Central African Republic. And that intervening is the first step to stabilizing the slaughter and – hopefully – stopping another genocide from […]
When I heard the news that Nelson Mandela, our beloved Madiba, was gone, I had flashbacks to the first time I laid eyes on my South African wife. I didn’t know much about South Africa at the time, and for some reason or another I kept calling her “Mandela” over the course of the entire […]
It happened when I was watching ESPN. I discovered that Madiba had passed. It was like a punch to the gut, even though I knew it was coming. He had been ill since I was in South Africa in June, July, and August, and yet it came from nowhere. And so now I have to […]
Being an American professor living in Africa and teaching international relations, I have been involved in numerous debates about my country and its foreign policy. Obviously you get your mix, some pro-U.S. and some not. To try and make better sense of the situation, I decided to embark on a little pet project in […]
Recent protests in Cape Town (and an article about those protests in the Mail and Guardian) provide a useful reminder that much of the discontent among South Africans, even those who otherwise would proclaim their fealty to the African National Congress (ANC), comes down to the delivery of services. This phrase is ubiquitous among politically […]
In 1986, after years of terror under the reign of Idi Amin and a resistance that yielded two successful military coups, Yoweri Museveni emerged as the unchallenged leader of Uganda, as his National Resistance Army seized Kampala and installed Museveni as president. That same year, another rebel group took up resistance against the newly formulated […]
What is the United States interest in Africa? What do African leaders and the people they are supposed to serve want from American engagement in their continent and in their countries? If we have a Venn diagram where the answers to these two questions exist as circles, where is the overlap between them that represents […]
Mouvement du 23-Mars (M23) rebels fled their stronghold in Bunaguna, a small town in the North Kivu province of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) on the border with Uganda, the rebel movement’s political leader, Bertrand Bisimwa, called for a ceasefire to end all hostilities. While fighting is ongoing, as Congolese government troops (FARDC) continue to […]
This past week South Africa’s Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe attended the fifth South Africa-China bi-national commission (BNC) in Beijing. There is nothing particularly shocking about this. China has worked hard in the last decade or more to establish relationships with African countries. And while we can argue (as myriad academics and journalists have) about the […]
“Somalia is a country where the soft power really needs to kick in harder and come in faster” Last week I shared the highlights of my interview with Ambassador Augustine P. Mahiga, the former head of the United Nations Political Office for Somalia and special representative of the U.N. Secretary General for Somalia (Part I […]
With each passing day it seemed another story crossed my desk that I wanted to write about. Now I have so many tabs open on my computer that it is slowing things down considerably. So without further ado, a roundup of stories that have caught my eye in recent days and weeks with brief commentary […]
A Conversation with Somalia’s Chief Peace maker and Constitutional Framer “Do people actually live here?” I recall asking myself as I made the torturous journey through the streets of the bullet-riddled ruins of Mogadishu in the back of a noisy, slow and filled-to-capacity, open-top military utility truck. It is difficult to imagine a place on […]
How to Keep Somalia’s “Lost Boys” Problem From Becoming Our Own “Christian American B*stard, go home!” was the insult hurled at me by a sandal-wearing, skinny and feisty 14-year-old Somali boy on a sultry day in Somalia in 1993. The boy’s name was Maxamed, and I was a 22-year-old U.S. Marine on the first of […]
The shale gas debate rages on across Europe, Asia, and North America, but one ponders how the already resource rich Southern Africa fits into this equation. What is there, what is the potential and what could it mean from an economic and geopolitical standpoint? One country already known to possess great potential that can be […]