I have published the first part of a two-part review of Patrick Chabal’s Africa: The Politics of Suffering and Smiling, on the African Arguments website. The first part is a general review of Bayart’s book, focusing on his treatment of

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This is the first in a two-part review of Patrick Chabal’s book, Africa: The Politics of Suffering and Smiling . Part one is a general review, part two applies the account to a part of the continent that the author

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The AUPD Report includes an Appendix that compiles the existing data for violent fatalities in Darfur from 1 January 2008 until 31 July 2009. As many people have not read that part of the report (pages 107-115), it is excerpted

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In most areas of public policy, gathering and analyzing evidence for the nature of the problem and the efficacy of response is a sine qua non for designing and implementing programs. The statistical analysis of disease patterns is the basis

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In the last month Sudan’s Government has forfeited the title ‘of National Unity.’ Cooperation between the NCP and SPLM hardly exists even in name. This week poses an important test of whether it warrants the name ‘Government’ at all. Sudan

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Alex de Waal’s Christian Michelsen lecture, ‘Fixing the Political Marketplace,’ given last month in Bergen, Norway, is now available online at this link. His article ‘The Price of Peace’ in Prospect magazine can be accessed here.

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These days’ mood in Khartoum is a mixture of disillusionment, suspicion and fear: not the best feelings for a country which finds itself at a crucial moment to determine its future. Amidst a growing anxiety, the different actors involved on

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According to the reports received by UNAMID, there were 67 deaths directly attributable to violence in Darfur during October. This figure is subject to the usual caveats, which is that UNAMID access is uneven. In some places UNAMID patrols have

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The Government of South Sudan (GOSS) has announced that it intends to establish a news agency that will cover areas of the south starved of mainstream media coverage [1]. The idea for establishing the News Agency of South Sudan (NASS)

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It is frequently heard that Arabs/Muslims and their media were silent, unmoved or without opinion over Darfur. These suppositions tend to contain a measure of moral equivalence and finger-pointing, suggesting that responding as a Westerner — regardless of the quality,

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