Richard dowden Blog

The World Economic Forum held its annual meeting (the Davos of Africa) in Cape Town last week. It was the biggest so far – yet another sign that business is taking Africa more and more seriously – but beyond the

Read the rest of Bob Diamond, Uhuru Kenyatta and the rise of Afro-confidence: WEF 2013, Cape Town – By Richard Dowden »

Everyone is so relieved that the Kenyan election this year did not result in a repeat of ethnic violence after the 2007 election, that we seem to have forgotten that both President Uhuru Kenyatta and Vice President William Ruto have

Read the rest of Kenyatta, Ruto and the ICC: major diplomatic earthquake in the offing – By Richard Dowden »

If you hadn’t noticed it is the United Kingdom’s turn to host the G8 again. Not as important these days as the G20 but, as a gathering of the old capitalist nations, it takes serious decisions (and sometimes implements them).

Read the rest of Tax havens and Africa: Will the G8 deal with the real issue? – By Richard Dowden »

I had not intended to come back to the Africa Rising debate for a while. But on my recent trip to Nigeria, Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda I was shocked at how angry the young professionals are. These are highly educated,

Read the rest of Africa’s rising rage: the middle classes call for revolution – By Richard Dowden »

The debate about the “image of Africa” seems to be reaching a consensus. The starving African child represents a reality that is rare and local. We must clear our minds of that image as representative of Africa, all of it,

Read the rest of Africa’s image and reality: wealth and poverty sit side-by-side – By Richard Dowden »

Africa is covered in epithets, like graffiti. It has been labelled dark, lost, hopeless. But generalisations about Africa are dangerous. The only certainty is its size: it could contain the United States, China and India and still have room to

Read the rest of Congo: UK and US must play more consistent hand to end world’s worst war – By Richard Dowden »

The story that has practically broken the BBC this week was the result of an appalling breach of the first journalistic rule – get the facts right. The journalist, Angus Stickler, broke this basic rule when he failed to show

Read the rest of Time to get back to basics at the BBC – By Richard Dowden »

In 2006 some friends of mine were given $5 million by Lisbet Rausing for education in Uganda. They set up an NGO called Mvule (named after a beautiful Ugandan tree), and asked me to be a Trustee. We decided to

Read the rest of How to bring education to the poor in Africa – By Richard Dowden »

Amentu, Ethiopia The Rift Valley in Eastern Africa is our hole in the ground, where we all come from. Not far from here our earliest ancestors stopped hanging out in the trees and started to use their rear limbs to

Read the rest of Ethiopia: a tale of two development models from the valley where we began – By Richard Dowden »

After 26 years of the most horrific war, Liberia seems to have settled down despite noisy disenchantment with the rule of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, now in her second term. I recently attended a conference on Liberia for some 300 investors

Read the rest of African economies rising – but are they taking the people with them? – By Richard Dowden »