Africa Watch – Mineral Wealth, Professionals Abroad and Honoring Winnie Mandela
Undervaluing Africa's mineral wealth Statistics taken from the African Development Bank focusing on the mining industry prospects in Africa, in 2012, highlighted that Africa represented only eight percent of global mineral production. This was broken down as bauxite 7 percent; chromite 38 percent; cobalt 60 percent; copper 9 percent; gold 20 percent; iron ore and lead 2 percent; manganese...
Fifty years on the Nile dam that changed the face of Egypt
MANILA SULTAN, Egypt—Yassin Saeed remembers when the Nile’s annual flood drenched his village in the years before the construction of the Aswan High Dam. Now, former flood lands are green fields year-round. “Our lives were very hard,” said the 76-year-old Egyptian, recounting how his father, his brothers and other farmers had to use the traditional felucca sailboats to harvest the...
America and a history of failure in South Sudan
America and its growing history of incompetence in failed state building in foreign lands is like a father uprooting and leaving babies he is no longer willing to care for. Afghanistan is the United States’ current example of the “Papa was a rolling stone” analogy. Before that we had South Sudan, another failed U.S. nation state building venture. And...
The response to military coups in Africa remains toothless
Getting rid of incentives for military takeovers in Africa is something regional organizations like the Economic Community of West Africa (ECOWAS) and the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) as well as the 55 member state African Union (AU) have not done well—and in some cases their responses have been miserable failures. The eight member state IGAD, composed of Djibouti, Eritrea,...
After fleeing Ukraine, South African students arrive home
JOHANNESBURG—Ten South African students who fled Ukraine after Russia’s invasion of that country recently arrived home, with 25 more expected over the next few days. Welcomed by cheering family and friends at OR Tambo International Airport, the students are among more than 80,000 foreign nationals who have left Ukraine since the Russian invasion, according to the International Organization for Migration. Returning...
Western forces, press try to delegitimize Africa neutrality toward Russia in U.S., NATO-led proxy war in Ukraine
The U.S.-led Western press machine is sucking the air out of the media-sphere with its “domination of the information space” and social media platforms like Twitter are putting significant and influential voices in “twitter jail,” said Riaz Tayob, a researcher with the South African Chapter of the Southern and Eastern African Trade Institute, on Russian media outlet RT’s “World...
Burkina Faso: Out of the frying pan with France but into the fire with the U.S.?
The West African nation of Burkina Faso placed its former colonial master France on notice to remove their military from its soil. The move coincides with an uptick of anti-France and anti-West sentiment on the continent and among people in the landlocked country. French troops were in Burkina Faso under a 2018 security agreement that allowed French Special Forces...
Africa can become new global supply chain force: UNCTAD
African economies should seize the opportunity to better integrate into technology-intensive global supply chains and boost prosperity, but this depends on their ability to harness key market and investment trends, the UN’s trade and development body, UNCTAD said on August 16. In a new report, UNCTAD shows that Africa can become a major exporter of higher value-added goods, creating growth and jobs, and fueling...
Mediation toward cessation of Sudan war is a long way off
“If this war (in Sudan) lasts for several years … the country that we knew as Sudan, a sort of regional linchpin, between the Red Sea, the Horn of Africa, the Sahel and Central Africa will no longer exist,” said Sudan policy and political analyst Kholood Khair, the founder and director of the UK-based Confluence Advisory think tank. As Israel’s...
UK official: Pay Zimbabwe for land reform
GINNEWS HARARE (GIN)–The British official who chaired Zimbabwe’s independence process has called on the UK government to meet its promises in helping pay for land resettlement and agricultural reform that has been at the center of controversy in this southern African country. Lord Peter Carrington says money set aside at the time of the Lancaster House negotiations at independence should be...