#Africa

If They Build It, Will the Kardashians Come? By Peter Savodnik The New York Times Magazine Azerbaijan is rich — oil rich — pushing one million barrels of crude oil through the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipepline per day. Perched on the Caspian and with a massive energy sector, it’s no wonder it was the fastest growing economy […]

“More than ever, foreign policy is economic policy. The world is competing for resources and global markets.”   John Kerry Considering the positive trend of the past eighteen months, Somalia is en route to recovery, and, in due course, to re-engineer a better state from the ground up. The caveat being: in the long term, this […]

  Budget support is in the news once more. Corruption in Uganda recently spurred several Western governments to suspend their budget support to the government there. Unfortunately, for Uganda, this type of foreign aid makes up almost a quarter of its annual operating budget. So I’m thinking about budget support again and its role in […]

Given all that we know and hear about Africa, success is not the first thing that comes to mind when penning about the African Union’s intervention in the continent’s conflicts. But this year, under the continental body’s watchful eye, Kismayo in Somalia has fallen in the hands of the Somalie government, and the two Sudan’s-South […]

As part of the European Union’s support for the U.N.’s Sustainable Energy for All initiative, E.U. Development Commissioner Andris Piebalgs announced with visiting Djibouti Prime Minister Dileita Mohamed Dileita that the E.U. would provide funding for a combined renewable energy and water desalinization plant. The plant, to be built near Djibouti City, is to provide water […]

While the subject matter is fascinating, this film falls short in at least a couple of ways. First, the music doesn’t seem to sync up with the action, being loud and dramatic during quiet scenes and being almost silent during the high drama that takes place. It also presupposes that the viewer is familiar with […]

Guest Post by Andy Kristian Agaba Four European governments froze some aid meant for Uganda following the discovery of massive corruption in the Prime Minister’s (PM) office. A forensic audit by the Auditor General’s office unearthed endemic theft of funds totaling to more than $25 million. Most of this money was meant for reconstruction of Northern […]

Last month, Oxfam International released a new policy paper (Our Land, Our Lives) that looked at large-scale farm land acquisitions in the developing world, along with the role of the World Bank in facilitating some of the transactions as an investor and/or advisor to national governments. According to Oxfam, Africa has borne the brunt of […]

Two and a half years after the Treaty of Lisbon, the EU showed up with a new human rights face for its external relations. The often repeated words of Catherine Ashton, the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, stating that human rights have to be a “silver thread” that runs […]

Guest post by Andy Kristian Agaba Recently, a friend recently sent forwarded to me an article he had read curious to hear what my opinion was. He wrote that after reading the article, he had mixed emotions of which I am not keenly aware as I didn’t bother to ask. After responding to him, I […]

Do women leaders matter for women? Not at the national level suggests Nicholas Kristof in a recent New York Times article focused on a specific woman leader he doesn’t care for very much. According to him, she’s bad for everyone in her country, but especially for the women. Kristof points out that, “metrics like girls’ education […]

You might think most foreign policy wonks were looking forward to last night’s presidential debate but most I know were actually dreading it. It was well known that the difficult and pressing questions on foreign policy would not be asked, and to be honest, foreign policy requires far more nuance and complexity than can fit […]