Kenyan runner Robert Cheruiyot's victory in Monday's Boston Marathon may represent one of those moments when sport can serve to unite rather than divide. At least that is the hope among Kenyans, where the country's world class distance runners are heroes to millions.
Combine Nigeria's vast oil reserves and the instability those riches have brought with China's avarice and rapaciousness when it comes to its thirst for oil and it seems to me that a recipe for disaster is simmering. China is prepared to loan Nigeria billions that in turn will grant the Chinese access to Nigeria's reserves […]
The multiplier effect of Robert Mugabe's destabilization of Zimbabwe is taking effect. The country desperately needs humanitarian aid, but the increasing violence of recent days has made the already wretched food situation even worse and has encroached upon the ability of humanitarian groups to help deliver foodstuffs to the third of the population that needs it. This […]
Chaos continues to reign in Somalia, the apodictic example of an ungoverned, and seemingly ungovernable, country. Politics, sectarianism, ethnicity, and perhaps most importantly simple naked avarice and powerlust contibue to fuel what may well be the least stable nation state in the world.
Despite rampant inflation, increasing violence, an opposition apparently on the run, mounting outside pressure, and, if British Prime Minister Gordon Brown is the be believed, a stolen election, Thabo Mbeki continues with his untenable belief that all is going to be fine in Zimbabwe. The latest sign of complacency is South Africa's willingness to allow a […]
[Cross-posted from the FPA South Africa Blog.] Despite rampant inflation, increasing violence, an opposition apparently on the run, mounting outside pressure, and, if British Prime Minister Gordon Brown is the be believed, a stolen election, Thabo Mbeki continues with his untenable belief that all is going to be fine in Zimbabwe. The latest sign of complacency […]
Kenya's new cabinet has been sworn in. It is bloated, it is costly, it is huge. But if you are Kenyan, I suppose you work with the cabinet you have, not the one you wish you had. The country has a long road ahead. Let us hope that road is traversible.
There is an argument, and it is a plausible one, at least, that oil and other resources can represent a curse for African nations and other countries in the developing world. But certainly having resources is preferable to having none — if oil is a curse, that curse has dual edges, cutting good and cutting bad. […]
Victim accounts of violence and torture of those perceived to be disloyal to Robert Mugabe — which is to say those who have had the audacity to exercise what should have been their right to support opposition parties such as the Movement for Democratic Change — have begun to emerge in Zimbabwe. As a general […]
Well, how to interpret this?: On the one hand, from Harare Zimbabwe's High Court ordered the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) not to recount the results from nearly two-dozen constituencies because the result of the presidential poll had not yet been announced. This represents a blow to Robert Mugabe. On the other hand, the same court […]
The Southern African Development Community (SADC) has met to deal with the situation in Zimbabwe and has made clear that the region's leaders want to see the results of the election that was held more than two weeks ago. Spokesmen nonetheless insist that there is no crisis in Zimbabwe, which, while absurd in light of the fact […]
South Africa has produced more than its share of great golfers. And yet Trevor Immelman's victory in today's Masters at Augusta National made him the first South African winner of a green jacket since the incomparable Gary Player won in 1978. This was Immelman's tournament and Immelman's week. He was unflappable playing from the lead […]
At The Washington Realist Nikolas Gvosdev makes a salient point about how the Western powers have a tendency to blame China for the instability in the Sudan (and to a lesser extent places such as Zimbabwe) and then use China's (admittedly noxious) behaviors as a cover for their own inaction.
Michael Gerson of The Washington Post has an op-ed in which he shows how an initiative to address the AIDS crisis in Zambia has met with remarkable results. Gerson's conclusion? That programs such as the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) reveal that “that the next step in the AIDS crisis is not only […]
Kenya (more famously) and Nigeria have both been dealing with fraught internal negotiations regarding the inner workings of government. The stalemate over the composition of the cabinet (and thus the dynamics of power) continues in Kenya. Outside observers, including the British, have advised that Mwai Kibaki's side be willing to give up some seats in […]