Two years ago during my first month living in Liberia, my colleague Lamii took me to the annual Press Union retreat in the city of Buchanan. It was a chance for journalists from across the country to spend a weekend

Read the rest of The Ambassador: Mads Brügger uncovers Liberia’s elite corruption – By Aaron Leaf »

South Africans need calm heads to examine what caused the slaughter of 44 workers and police officers at the Marikana mine. The judicial commission of inquiry appointed by President Jacob Zuma may present the facts. But we have to go past

Read the rest of South Africa needs calm heads after Marikana mine tragedy – By Jay Naidoo »

It is election month in Luanda and the city is awash with billboards, posters, and illuminated displays of President José Eduardo dos Santos, leaving little to the imagination as to who is in charge of the show. However, the mixture

Read the rest of Angolan Elections 2012: beer and circuses no longer enough – By Claudia Gastrow »

The tragic and fatal shooting of 34 mineworkers in South Africa has sadly brought back memories of the violence of the apartheid years. And because memories of apartheid are not only limited to South Africa, the killing fields of Marikana

Read the rest of Southern African Implications of The Marikana Lonmin Mineworkers Shooting Tragedy — by Takura Zhangazha »

The BAE ‘saga’ – which involved the sale of a military air traffic control system to the Tanzanian government in 2001 in a deal that was blatantly corrupt* – raised its ugly head again last week with the Tanzanian media

Read the rest of Tanzania: Britain increasingly accepting of partnership with corrupt government – By Sarah Hermitage »

Sub-Saharan Africa’s accelerated economic growth over the last decade has been well documented. Feted as the next boom market, especially with the backdrop of the economic slowdown in the West, there has been a tendency by many commentators to hail

Read the rest of Could China’s slowdown mark the end of Africa’s decade of growth? – By Barbara Njau, Senior Reporter at fDi Magazine, fDi Intelligence »

Ahead of the 31 August legislative elections — the third the country has ever known — the situation in Angola is increasingly tense. Opposition parties denounce the work of the National Electoral Commission (CNE) as biased and warn of electoral

Read the rest of Angola Elections 2012: Dos Santos victory likely to bring more protests and violent repression – By Jon Schubert »

Taking up the call made by a number of recent contributions to the peace- and state-building literatures to ‘see what’s there’ (as opposed to seeing ‘what’s missing’ or ‘what should be there’), this interesting and thought-provoking volume, edited by Mats

Read the rest of Big Men, African Conflicts and Informal Power – A Review by Richard Mallett, ODI »

Somalia’s upcoming permanent government is feted as a model for national reconciliation and good governance. The signatories are largely former militia members, intellectual Diasporans, and members of Puntland and Galmudug states. These corrupt leaders have been quick to set aside

Read the rest of Somali Elections: politicians continue to use the country’s institutions for personal profit – By Prof. Liban A. Egal »

In the rush to judgement on the record and the legacy of Meles Zenawi as Ethiopia’s leader for the past two decades, the man himself has barely left the shadows.  Yes, he achieved record economic growth for his country, and

Read the rest of Meles Zenawi: in his own words – By Peter Gill »