A Tunisian who works for the moderate Islamist channel Al Wihar met me yesterday and said: “Sudan is next, but not in the same manner.” Several Sudanese opposition writers and politicians have also predicted a Tunisian or Egyptian style uprising

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Kenya PM Raila Odinga meets Laurent Gbagbo to discuss solutions to Cote d’Ivoire’s political paralysis In Tunisia, street protests; in Ivory Coast, a call for a general strike meets limited success. In one country, a long-time president leaves power, in

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The civil war in Côte d’Ivoire presents unique features with respect to the causes of civil wars and the nature of peace processes in West Africa. It is a conflict largely driven by concrete political and social grievances over citizenship. In addition, it is marked by a significant effort by the belligerents to take ownership of the peace process and negotiate directly. This article traces the civil war to the politicization of citizenship and ethnicity during the democratization process. It argues that the peace agreements engineered by the international community failed to end the conflict largely because they relied heavily on traditional peace formulas and paid insufficient attention to the underlying issue of citizenship. In contrast, the peace agreement forged by Ivorians has been relatively successful because it directly addressed the citizenship issue and restored domestic ownership of the peace process. This article focuses on the peace process and the intrinsic relation between citizenship and progress toward peace in Côte d’Ivoire. In addition, it connects the discourse on democracy in Africa with the salient issue of citizenship and underscores the fluidity of citizenship and democracy in African politics. Continue reading →

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Among the many issues which are being discussed in the aftermath of Southern Sudan’s self-determination referendum, the “domino effect” which could be triggered in Africa and the rest of the world is one of the most worrisome. Analysts and journalists

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Why do so many individuals and organizations shy away from calling land grabbing what it is, and either put it in inverted commas or trot out such euphemisms as ‘responsible land-based investment’, ‘commercial pressures on land’ or ‘large-scale investment in land’?

Why are researchers who have worked on land grabbing so apparently timid and complacent in their conclusions, so desperately eager to seek magic, painless ‘win-win’ solutions, and so quick to retreat to ‘each case is different, the devil lies in the detail’ formulations. Could it be that they fear to antagonize their donors? Continue reading →

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The indigenous people of the Nuba Mountains are extremely concerned that international concentration on South Sudan’s independence referendum has meant other crucial aspects of Sudan’s so-called Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) have been neglected. The CPA stopped the brutal civil war

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Jerome Tubiana. Chroniques du Darfour. Grenoble: Editions Glénat, in partnership with Amnesty International, 2010. ISBN978-2-7234-7831-1. This is a unique contribution to the growing field of Dar Fur studies, which brings to bear on the war in Dar Fur the unique

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I want you to leave tonight still confused! Why? Because I do not think there are yet strong enough grounds for a sure, caveat-free line on fair trade. It certainly often doesn’t do what it says on the label. It has created some benefits. There is a risk that fair trade diverts attention from prioritising what really reduces poverty, which is dramatic structural change. Continue reading →

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Orla Ryan is a journalist and author of Chocolate Nations: living and dying for chocolate in West Africa Visit any sweets counter in a UK supermarket and you are quickly overwhelmed by choice. Organic chocolate from the Dominican Republic?  Dark

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China’s relations with Africa hit the headlines again recently with the publication of what seemed to be sensational revelations in a dozen or so of the Wikileaks cables. We’ve read that the U.S. State Department’s top Africa expert believes that China is a “pernicious economic competitor” with “no morals” in its African dealings. US embassies report that Chinese nationals are implicated in cases of counterfeit products and environmental damage and at least one alleged incident of bribery. Many Chinese-run companies operating in Africa have poor labor relations and safety standards, and their tendency to bring in large numbers of Chinese workers goes over poorly in African countries with high unemployment. We read that the Chinese remain engaged in countries with human rights abuses: Sudan (where the West has imposed sanctions) and Zimbabwe (where the West has actually imposed almost no economic sanctions). Continue reading →

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