Business Day reports that business confidence in South Africa is at a six-year low. I am actually surprised that things in South Africa are not worse given the calamitous tone of forecasts in the United States. Perhaps this is just the beginning, and South Africa faces a grim long-range economic picture. Or possibly South Africa's […]
The Guinean coup has caused the countries of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) to worry about the ripple effects of instability in that country. Thus the heads of state of ECOWAS member states were to hold an extraordinary meeting in Abuja, Nigeria, today. This will mark the first regional crisis that Ghana's new President John […]
From the little island nation of Cape Verde comes a potentially innovative possibility for addressing water shortages. The solution? Converting fog into potable water.
In recent weeks South Africa's newly established African National Congress dissident party, the Congress of the People (COPE), has dominated the political discussion and thus in many meaningful ways has won the news cycle. The ANC has consistently fought back, but have consistently appeared to be reacting to COPE rather than actively controlling the agenda. This appears to be […]
It is easy to identify the worst of Somalia's seemingly innumerable problems. The country embodies the concept of the failed state. Much harder is identifying viable solutions. One possibility — and the one that may well gain the most traction and ultimately lead to hope for some sort of resolution — is the dissolution of Somalia, a […]
South Africans are gearing up for many fights in 2009. It increasingly appears that one of these, sure to be among the most explosive, may be a serious reconsideration of the role, efficacy, and direction of affirmative action. The Congress of the People (COPE) has made clear its serious concerns over the nature of affirmative […]
A lack of economic diversification has long plagued much of Africa. During the colonial era and well beyond mono-crop agriculture did demonstrable harm to numerous societies. One of the destabilizing factors that fueled the conditions that created the Rwandan genocide, for example, was the collapse of coffee prices in a country dependent upon exporting coffee beans. Increasingly the […]
“Everything is fine, until the moment when it is not. And when that moment comes it can be very quick and very bad.” — Aiméry Mbounkap, a site planner for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. The New Yorker has a lengthy feature revealing just how difficult it is to be a humanitarian aid […]
I do not watch the American network news programs. There are too many better options and the quality of the evening news programs, while rarely awful, is pretty shallow. I was not surprised, then, to find out that the coverage of international affairs on the network news programs reached a record low in 2008. I would surmise, […]
Just when the situation in Zimbabwe seems to have reached depths that defy absurdity a new story crosses the transom that baffles the imagination. The latest piece of bemusement comes with the tale of the arrest of three white men on charges of training terrorists with the goal of overhtrowing Robert Mugabe. The three did in fact have […]
In The Washington Post Chris Beyrer and Frank Donoghue illustrate the ways in which the cholera epidemic is merely a small (albeit visible and alarming) component of Zimbabwe's health crisis. And they blame Robert Mugabe for this spiraling crisis. Reductionist? Perhaps. Inaccurate? Not in any meaningful way.
Between the holidays, lots of travel, and general end-of-old-year, beginning-of-new activities I have not been able to devote much-deserved time to the coup in Guinea. This allAfrica article assesses the regional political ramifications that Guinea's forced regime change has wrought.
Robert Mugabe has taken a month-long leave, part of which he will spend outside of Zimbabwe. To say the least, Mugabe's plans raise a slew of questions. Are there any ramifications for this trip? Is this merely Mugabe's solipsism coming to the fore? Is the old despot suffering from ill health? Is it even remotely […]
The opposition candidate, John Atta Mills of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), appears to have won a slim margin of victory in Ghana's runoff election held last week. Both optimistic and pessimistic observers now hope that the results hold up and that no violence springs up in the wake of the final tally. Place me in […]
Is the African National Congress losing its best people to the newly formed rival Congress of the People? That is an argument being put forth in at least some circles. In response to another series of high-profile defections from the ANC to COPE Dirk Smit, Speaker of the City of Cape Town municipality, has asserted that […]