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.
Kenya: Tourist arrivals pick up after months of downward trend
Nairobi (Kenya) - Kenya's tourism sector is once again on a growth path with the number of tourists visiting the East African nation now increasing. Read >
Thursday, 30 August 2012
The Nation (Kenya)
South Africa: Lonmin mining communities: A powder keg of inequality
Johannesburg (South Africa) - A leaked report shows that the appalling living conditions of Marikana miners are nothing new to Lonmin, despite its social responsibility efforts. Read >
Tuesday, 28 August 2012
Mail and Guardian (South Africa)
South Africa: Facing reality after the Marikana massacre
Johannesburg (South Africa) - The African National Congress has been captured by a predatory elite that is cynical, corrupt, ruthless and reckless. It is actively reinscribing unbridgeable inequalities into the deep structures of our society. The transit camps and new townships in the cities, the enduring ways in which the former Bantustans remain separate and unequal zones in the countryside, the state of public education and the growth of unemployment and precarious work all mark out this out with undeniable clarity. Read >
Tuesday, 28 August 2012
South African Civil Society Information Service (SACSIS), by Richard Pithouse*
Angola: Dos Santos election victory likely to bring more protests and repression
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 fraud, while the ruling MPLA, using increasingly bellicose rhetoric, has threatened to match every opposition protest with a larger counter-demonstration. Read >
Tuesday, 28 August 2012
African Arguments, by Jon Schubert
Ethiopia: How Meles and the ‘new breed’ changed Africa
Nairobi (Kenya) - Meles Zenawi is the first to die of the quartet of former rebels whom the West in the late 1990s branded “a new breed” of African leaders. Read >
Tuesday, 28 August 2012
The East African (Kenya), by Tom Maliti*
Ethiopia: After Meles (analysis)
The death of Prime Minister Meles Zenawi on 20 August has triggered a constitutional succession mechanism which he personally designed, having led the ruling Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front for 21 years. His chosen successor, Hailemariam Desalegn, takes over in the first non-violent transition in Ethiopia's modern history. Read >
Tuesday, 28 August 2012
Africa Confidential
Gambia: Nine death row prisoners executed, Amnesty says
Banjul (Gambia) - Amnesty International has disclosed that nine death row prisoners were executed on Thursday night in Gambia. Read >
Tuesday, 28 August 2012
The East African (Kenya), by Baboucarr Ceesay
Gambia: Give us a straightforward answer: Have prisoners been executed?
Banjul (Gambia) During these past days the media establishments and many governments and regional bodies of the world have focused on Gambia like they have never done before. Read >
Tuesday, 28 August 2012
Forayaa, Gambia
Kenya: The push for peace needs other changes (editorial)
Nairobi (Kenya) - The National Conference on Peaceful Elections opened in Nairobi with many promises from the government and the responsible agencies. Read >
Tuesday, 28 August 2012
The Nation (Kenya)