As should be clear, I am an ardent supporter of America developing a strong Africa policy that will serve all sides but that will allow Africans to set the direction of policies, priorities, and the general approach. And I sure wish America had done something with regard to Darfur several years ago. It seems a […]
At the risk of self indulgence, it appears that many analysts agree with my own assessment of the situation in Mozambique that four competing parties agreeing to form a government is a lot easier than those parties actually forming the government.
The 100-days benchmark for assessing presidential leadership is pretty silly even as it becomes increasingly common. In the United States there is at least a bit of historical salience given Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s “Hundred Days” of frenzied New Deal activity. In May, when I was a fellow at Keele University’s David Bruce Centre for American […]
In her last major stop on her whirlwind Africa tour (all respect, Cape Verde) Hillary Clinton in Liberia weighed in on the controversy surrounding President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and the recommendation of her country’s Truth and Reconciliation that she (and other politicians) not be allowed to hold office after their current terms expire. Clinton put […]
When people think about the humanitarian crises caused by the nightmare that is Somalia, an effectively ungoverned, stateless society beset by violence, chaos, and grave uncertainty, they tend to think of the effects of that violence. But there is a largely unexplored crisis that looms barely beneath the surface in which such instability means that […]
Hillary Clinton is reaching the end of her trip to Africa. Her last major stop came in Nigeria, where she predictably encouraged Nigerians to clean up their political system, most notably the way the country runs its elections. Some have claimed that Clinton made a gaffe when she referenced the 2000 election fiasco in the […]
Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu is a titanic figure for freedom in not only South African but also global history. It is hard to overstate his courage during the 1980s when South Africa exploded in violence as the opposition movement that revitalized itself after the Soweto Uprising met up against an increasingly intransigent and desperate South […]
Hillary Clinton moved on from the Democratic Republic of Congo and particularly her trip to Goma and is now in Nigeria where she is continuing the balancing act between proclaiming alliances and demanding accountability, with heavy emphasis on reducing graft. Clinton’s Goma trip, which actually was quite remarkable given the tendency of outsiders to swoop […]
This World Politics Review piece is less an article and more of an indictment of American policy toward Somalia, which most recently featured the mind-bogglingly bad decision to sell 40 tons of arms to a government that might not sustain itself long enough to jimmy open the boxes. Of course the article is long on […]
Most people, if they think of Madagascar at all, know it only as the backdrop for a bunch of cartoon critters from a zoo in New York City who, through a serious of hijinks, end up stranded on that African island nation. But Madagascar has more difficulties with governance than a monomaniacal (though generally harmless) […]
Kenya has formed a new anti-terrorism unit, the Ranger Strike Force, as part of major reforms in the military. According to Kenya’s The Nation newspaper (via allAfrica): Formed with the assistance of the United States Government, the new unit has been behind a number of security operations on the Kenya-Somalia border to prevent terrorist infiltration […]
A comic book about African conflict and efforts at reconciliation? I was skeptical too. But Unknown Soldier seems worth a look. According to this story in The New York Times: Unknown Soldier, published by Vertigo, an imprint of DC Comics, is about Dr. Lwanga Moses, a Ugandan whose family fled the country for the United […]
If you want a sense of the deep divisions among serious observers of the situation in Zimbabwe you could do worse than to draw a sense of the schizophrenia indicated by two recent articles in the Mail & Guardian: In A New Beginning? David Smith posits (with trepidation, as the question mark in the title […]
Is it possible that the Truth and Reconciliation process in Liberia will have the effect of tearing the country apart (again)? This is a fear that some in the country share, at least in part because President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf rejects some of the TRC’s findings, largely because she is included in the report for […]
This week’s (American) Sports Illustrated magazine has an article on a South African who hopes to become the first African player in Major League Baseball. Mpho Ngoepe’s story is a compelling one and SI vet Gary Smith tells it well. And I do not expect American sportswriters to be either specialists on Africa or even […]