Africa News Update
Africa News Update offers news, background and feature articles from African sources twice weekly. The newsletter is free of charge and is edited by the Norwegian Council for Africa. Some of the articles may be shortened.
Liberia: Sirleaf needs to use powers to the fullest (comment)
Liberia has come a long way from the bloody civil wars that raged from 1989 until former president Charles Taylor left office in 2003. Read >
Monday, 18 June 2012
AllAfrica.com, by Gilles Yabi*
Libya: When protector turned killer (opinion)
Back in January Faiz Fathi Jfara of Bani Walid asked a simple question, “I just need an answer from NATO: Why did you destroy my home and kill my family?” NATO refuses to answer him. Read >
Monday, 18 June 2012
Pambazuka News, by Vijay Prashad
Nigeria: The next phase of Boko Haram terrorism (analysis)
Let me begin by reminding everyone that Boko Haram has a very long history, whether you describe Boko Haram as an army of the discontent, or even as some people grotesquely try to suggest, “revolutionaries,” or you describe them as, legitimately, this time, as marginalised or feeling marginalised. Read >
Monday, 18 June 2012
Pambazuka News, by Wole Soyinka
Kenya: Racist Western media portraying Europe negatively (opinion)
Nairobi (Kenya) - This week’s issue of Newsweek magazine has a photo of a euro, which is all breaking up, on its cover. On the left top corner is “Kaput?” On the top right “Finito?” On the bottom left corner “Fini?” And at bottom right, “The End?” Read >
Monday, 18 June 2012
The East African (Kenya), by Charles Onyango-Obbo*
Uganda: Spain is not Spain, and Greece is not Greece (opinion)
Kampala (Uganda) - By referring to Uganda in his now infamous tweet, the Spanish prime minister Mariano Rajoy should have actually made the Uganda government proud. Of all the failed and broke states around the world, how did this leader of the EU’s fourth largest economy think of poor little Uganda? Read >
Monday, 18 June 2012
The East African (Kenya), by Kalundi Serumaga
South Africa: Dropped against the rocks of promise
Johannesburg (South Africa) - More than half of our young people are unemployed. For many of these people there is no formal route through which they can develop their energies and creativity and have them rewarded with a passage into autonomy and adulthood. Time becomes circular rather than linear and as life moves in descending and tightening spirals rather than up and forward, pain and panic set into the bones. Read >
Monday, 18 June 2012
South African Civil Society Information Service (SACSIS), by Richard Pithouse*
Africa: China keen to reverse negative image
Cape Town (South Africa) – The reality of Indian and Chinese investment in Africa is much more complex than the good cop, bad cop image of Asia’s two emerging economic giants. Read >
Friday, 01 June 2012
Inter Press Service (IPS)
Africa: Peace-making role for West African trade bloc Ecowas
Johannesburg (South Africa) - With a string of political crises in West Africa over the past few months it has been a busy time for mediators of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), which has a mandate and history of intervention - which in terms of scale sets it apart from other trading blocs in Africa. Read >
Friday, 01 June 2012
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks (IRIN)
Uganda: First lady denies grabbing land, to sue Monitor paper
Kampala (Uganda) - The First lady and Minister for Karamoja, Janet Museveni has issued the Monitor Newspaper with a notice of intention to sue over a story that implicated the First Family in alleged land grabbing in Karamoja. Read >
Friday, 01 June 2012
New Vision (Uganda)