Posting may be light this week, as I am traveling to Phoenix and then to Washington, DC for the Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa (ASMEA) meeting where I will be presenting a paper on democratization in Namibia, Zimbabwe, and South Africa. I will try to post as I can. Meanwhile, […]
Because why come up with original ideas when others will have them for me? As usual, here are stories that have caught my eye, with my commentary where apropos: The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has bestowed its blessing upon Nigeria’s new Petroleum Industry Bill even as international oil companies who fear a government monopoly. Basically, […]
At the UK’s Prospect magazine David Goldblatt has as good a defense of South Africa’s hosting the World Cup as any I have seen. I have been an ardent defender of South Africa being prepared and capable and am pleased to see Goldblatt’s piece so aggressively and capably tackle one of the most pernicious critics […]
Robert Mugabe has appointed Gideon Gono, who heads Zimbabwe’s reserve bank, to another five-year term, which, given what happened to the Zim economy under Gono’s watch, has caused something of an uproar. Gono denies ruining the country’s economy, which is probably true inasmuch as Gono was not solely or even primarily responsible for Zimbabwe’s economic […]
Forget all of the speculation as to whether South Africa will be able to pull off hosting the World Cup next year (it will). More worrisome to the typical South African football fan is the tattered state of a Bafana Bafana club that is heading in the wrong direction with time running out. Since the […]
I am deeply skeptical of online education, especially as it’s being sold both to the public (cheap college in your pajamas!) and to those of us in academia (students want cheap college in their pajamas! We must give it to them!) But certainly the internet can be a very useful tool for learning. I will […]
Paroxysms of township violence always set off alarms. Sometimes the clashes are the result of ethnic or xenophobic backlash. At other times they mark a political statement, as with the recent protests at Standerton, 90 miles or so Southeast of Johannesburg in Mpumalanga. Often such alarming events represent the various fissures in South Africa’s socio-economic […]
Here is a roundup of stories accumulating on my desktop, with commentary as applicable: Are American investors missing out on great investment opportunities in Sub-Saharan Africa? This opinion piece in The Christian Science Monitor argues as much: “Investment-led growth in Africa will enable that continent to contribute to the recovery from the global recession affecting […]
Last week The Mail & Guardian published a lengthy article from the respected South African scholar Hermann Giliomee defending Afrikaans-medium instruction at Stellenbosch University. From the concluding paragraphs: The university has made no real progress on transformation and has left the coloured Afrikaans-speaking community in the lurch. It runs the risk of alienating both its […]
So Robert Mugabe is ready for “fresh and cooperative relations” with the West. Well that’s a breath of fresh air. The problem, of course, is that we’ve heard this song and dance before. Here is the script to a movie we’ve all seen: Act I: Mugabe ruthlessly pillories and hectors and scathes and condemns the […]
It seems that some things will never change. One certainty is that American policy toward Africa will nearly always be reactive, and worse yet, those reactions will be slow. Not slow as in deliberative and nuanced, but rather slow as in indecisive and apathetic. The latest example of this American dithering on Africa comes in […]
The responsibility of an opposition party is, well, to oppose. To hold the majority party’s feet to the fire, to criticize, to represent those who do not feel represented by the party in power. In South Africa there is no doubt that Helen Zille and the Democratic Alliance (DA) take their responsibility seriously (even if […]
A Barrage of Links and selective commentary as I try to get back to a regular routine after all of the travel of late: South African president Jacob Zuma is considering granting his economic development ministry greater powers but first needs to determine whether doing so would be constitutional. The Congress of South African Trade […]
The Africa Center for Strategic Studies has launched its new website. On the front page are links to articles about the United States’ engagement with Africa and the complex security threats across the continent.
According to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) index, Niger is the worst place in the world to call home. (Norway ranked first). Rankings like this always seem like exercises in precision rather than accuracy — Niger is worse than the Democratic Republic of Congo and Chad and Sudan? Worse than Zimbabwe? Norway is better […]