The Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS has released its 2008 report on the global AIDS epidemic. The prognosis for Africa? Real improvement in many ways, but nowhere near enough.
Regional leaders continue to cast a wary eye toward Guinea, where a military junta has taken control after last month's coup. The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) has condemned the coup and has suspended Guinea's membership in the regional body until constitutional order is restored in that country. ECOWAS follows the lead of […]
So, is Jacob Zuma going to face corruption charges or not? The possibility certainly is still strong, though the ANC has vowed to fight any such reinstatement of graft accusations against their presumed future presidential candidate. But what stands out most in the latest salvos in this increasingly byzantine drama is the absolutely blistering and […]
There is a new website, Global Post, committed to international affairs. The Global Post Africa page is well worth your time.
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 […]
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