Oh, this is not good. Nigerian President Umaru Yar-Adua’s health is apparently a serious problem. He has effectively disappeared at a time when crisis in the country’s North and the tenuous cease-fire with the Movement for Emancipation of Niger Delta (MEND) require serious leadership and no one seems to have any serious grasp as to just how […]
I would like to draw your attention to two new websites from the same organization, Global Information Network. The first is their website, including their page for African affairs. This page carries news from their news partner – the IPS (Inter Press Service) wire which they edit for U.S. readers. Registration is free, but after a couple of […]
The Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa (ASMEA) has published its latest newsletter. I present it to you here (pdf).
We are in the midst of a whole host of changes at the FPA’s blogging network. Much of our work will involve consolidating our many wonderful blogs into various categories. The Africa Blog will be part of a network of blogs in the “Africa and the Middle East” category, for which I will serve as […]
My FPA Blogging colleague Sean Patrick Murphy has featured the South African-set sci-fi movie District 9 at the Global Film Review blog. [I am working on a lengthy essay on the movie, which I will link once it is published.]
Things have been quiet here at the Africa blog with the end of the academic semester and the onset of the holidays. But I’ll be back in full force soon with regular posting and, soon, with my annual “Africa: Year in Review” post. Until then I want to wish all of my readers, regular, casual, […]
As if menacing its own people is not enough, Guinea’s military junta is now getting chesty with the international community at large. The military leaders have vowed to defeat any “preventive deployment” of troops that might come as the result of internatonal intervention in the country’s affairs. “We will consider such deployment as a declaration of war against […]
Taking a lesson from Barack Obama’s tech-savvy presidential campaign last year Kenya plans to use text messaging to promote the East African Community Common Market. The goal of the campaign is twofold. Its advocates want to sell the idea, but they also want to educate people about it, as they fear that not enopugh Kenyans […]
Reporting for the Middle East Political and Economic Institute, Foreign Policy Association blogger Manuela Paraipan shares a recent interview on the Muslim Brotherhood, with Dr. Kareem Mahmoud Kamel, Assistant Professor of Political Science at The American University in Cairo (AUC). Please visit the MEPEI website to access the interview in audio/pdf format and to access […]
Reporting for the Middle East Political and Economic Institute, Foreign Policy Association blogger Manuela Paraipan shares a recent interview on post Hosni Mubarak Egypt, with Dr. Amr Hamzawy, Senior Associate at Carnegie Middle East Center. Please visit the MEPEI website to access the interview in audio/pdf format and to check out other interviews by Manuela […]
Earlier this week at the world climate talks in Copenhagen South Africa announced that the country plans to cut its carbon emissions by 34% by 2020. However, South Africa will need the support of “developed countries” to do so. This seems like a brilliant strategy. Most discussions about climate change for nations in Africa, Asia […]
New research by the invaluable South African Institute of Race Relations (SAIRR) indicates that murder rates in South Africa are actually down 30% since 1994-1995. This news flies counter to the stubborn narrative of South African crime escalating out of control. It also should provide something of a palliative for those wringing their hands over […]
In April Sudan will hold elections, which will provide something of an interregnum between the the twin poles of state-sanctioned chaos in Darfur and the seemingly ceaseless conflict between Sudan’s north and south. Human rights groups still want to hold Sudan to account for its past perfidy, with an organization called the Enough Project calling […]
At the FPA’s Global Film Review Blog my colleague Sean Patrick Murphy takes a look at God Grew Tired of Us, a 2007 documentary tracing three of Sudan’s “lost boys” from a refugee camp to the United States, where they have to adjust to an entirely different life while reconciling with their pasts. I concur […]
Prepare for a serious crackdown in Guinea. On Monday a member of one of the disaffected factions of the country’s military shot President Moussa Dadis Camara, the leader of the junta that took power by coup eleven months ago, in a failed coup. The alleged assassin did not succeed in killing or seriously incapacitating the […]