In The News

US General Says No Plans for Africa Command HQ in Africa

Alisha Ryu April 11, 2008
While US voters remain focused on the Middle East, the US military quietly works on security matters elsewhere in the world. As part of this effort, the US military devotes more attention to Africa. Several key African nations are wary of any new form of colonialism. In an effort to allay those fears, the US military’s new Africa Command insists that its goals are diplomatic and humanitarian....

Why Africa Must Make Health Spending a Priority

Helen Nyambura-Mwaura April 4, 2008
Health analysts agree that hiring of African nurses and doctors by hospitals in developing nations is a problem that invites the risk of new diseases emerging and spreading quickly around the globe. The 10 countries with the highest tuberculosis and HIV rates are in Africa. Health care workers are in short supply around the globe, but shortages are particularly acute in the poorest countries....

Snowplows for Guinea

Bartholomäus Grill March 10, 2008
One philosopher observes that a “taking” form of colonialism has transformed into a “giving” one. Donating funds to impoverished nations should not contribute to poverty, but that’s what has happened throughout Africa. Wealthy donors support projects that either cost additional funds or fail. “But the worst consequence of this aid is that it paralyzes self-initiative and encourages a true...

How to Buy a Gun in Darfur

Daniel Pepper March 10, 2008
The Darfur region of Sudan is home to a series of interconnected conflicts that blend genocide with large-scale rebel armies fighting both the Sudanese and Chad governments. Investigative reporter Daniel Pepper went to Darfur in 2006 to find out how the United Front for Democracy and Change (FUCD), a rebel force seeking to overthrow Chad’s regime, obtains its weapons and equipment. He discovered...

Bush in Africa: A Continent Adrift

Donald Steinberg February 18, 2008
President Bush’s long-awaited trip to Africa has come at a time when the continent is in turmoil. This is, however, the consequences of internal division that afflicts Africa and the divisive approach taken by foreign powers. Africans watched as their own leaders and the international community designated various players as friends or foe – in terms of natural resources, Cold War allies, those...

Genocide Prevention: 60 Years of Abject Failure

Eric Reeves February 6, 2008
Genocide is a horrific crime, condemned throughout the world since the Holocaust. But the world still struggles to prevent genocide, even 60 years after passage of the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, writes English professor Eric Reeves, in the Christian Science Monitor. Perpetrators elude punishment and condemnation by escaping media attention or...

Europe Takes Africa’s Fish, and Boatloads of Migrants Follow

Sharon LaFraniere January 15, 2008
Huge industrial trawlers, most from Europe, push through waters off the African coast, efficiently scraping sea beds clean of fish. Such nonselective industrial fishing has devastated fish populations and habitat, destroying a livelihood and encouraging more African fishermen to use their boats to assist fellow Africans in fleeing their homelands for work in Europe. Governments throughout Africa...