In The News

Hypocritical Arab Generosity on Darfur

Julie Flint April 3, 2006
At the Arab League summit in Khartoum, leaders offered to fund the African Union (AU) peacekeeping force in Darfur, pledging $150 million starting on October 1 of 2006. The only problem is that the AU’s mandate is due to expire on September 30. Meanwhile the greatest need is now. The League’s decision amounts to prescribing medicine after the patient expires. The author suggests that Arab...

Spain Scrambles to Cope With Tide of African Migrants

Renwick Mclean March 21, 2006
As thousands of Africans gather in Mauritania, seeking eventual passage to the EU, Spain is taking an active role in preventing the migrant job-seekers from reaching its shores. Spain’s deputy prime minister paid an emergency visit to the Canary Islands to discuss controls on the record flow of African migrants reaching there from Africa’s Atlantic seaboard. Many of the Africans, who are...

Mauritania Calls for Help on EU-Bound Migrant Flood

Ahmed Mohammed March 20, 2006
More than 1000 Africans have died in the first four months of 2006, trying to reach the EU and the economic opportunity it represents. Increasing numbers of desperate migrants flee Africa in crowded and small fishing canoes, called pirogues, from Mauritania to the Canary Islands and the coast of Spain. Police intercepted a record 400 Africans in a single day, crowded into nine boats. In 2005...

Nigeria Counts 100 Deaths over Danish Caricatures

Lydia Polgreen February 27, 2006
Violence over the Danish cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed that has resulted in more than 100 deaths in Nigeria offers an example of global issues impinging on the country’s domestic politics. The country’s Muslims and Christians have a history of tension, and the cartoons prompted tit-for-tat violence. Political analysts suggest that, in Nigeria, the cartoon controversy functioned as a pretext...

An Age-Old Salt Lake May Yield a Washday Miracle

Marc Lacey February 21, 2006
The otherworldly microbes in Kenya’s Lake Bogoria have proved instrumental in perfecting many worldly goods. Genencor International, Inc., has patented and used enzyme samples it purchased from scientists who visited the lake to enhance such mundane commodities as detergent and blue jeans. While Genencor touts the commercial success of innovative science, however, Kenyans demand that the...

How Kenya Is Caught on the Thorns of Britain's Love Affair with the Rose

Jeevan Vasagar February 14, 2006
Kenya controls a quarter of the British rose market, and the flower, now the country’s second-largest export, is fueling much of the nation’s economic growth. Once blasted over low pay and poor working conditions, Kenya’s foreign-owned rose growers have cleaned up their act and reinvest some of their profits in Kenyan communities under the principles of fair trade. The flower industry’s...

The Global Sweep to Mop Up the World's Oil Resources

November 14, 2005
China is scouring the globe for energy with which to fuel its economic boom. It has found much of that energy in Africa. Dangling promises of aid and development in exchange for access to oil, Beijing has forged partnerships with a growing number of countries south of the Sahara. The Chinese are not uneasy about dealing with African regimes considered too corrupt or too brutal by the West....