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.
Africa: Trauma travels too
Johannesburg (South Africa) - Georgette* is jumpy and on the verge of tears even before she starts recounting her long and harrowing story of loss and violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), her desperate flight to South Africa, and the struggles and setbacks she has endured since arriving in Johannesburg a year ago. Read >
Thursday, 24 May 2012
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks (IRIN)
Ethiopia/Eritea: Why Ethiopia won't back down on the border (analysis)
For several years, combat along the tense Eritrean-Ethiopian frontier has been entirely rhetorical. This changed on March 16th, 2012 when the Ethiopian government boldly announced that it had crossed into Eritrean territory in an attack on three military installations. Read >
Thursday, 24 May 2012
African Arguments, by Michael Woldemariam*
South Africa: Time for radical action on the unemployment crisis
Johannesburg (South Africa) - There are at least four million young people without jobs in South Africa. This is the country’s worst crisis, yet some people still say that the ANC has done well with the economy. Read >
Thursday, 24 May 2012
Pambazuka News, by Ayanda Kota*
South Africa: The youth wage subsidy: Mixing farce with force (opinion)
The spectacle of the blows between a Democratic Alliance-led crowd and COSATU (Congress of South African Trade Unions) would have been the stuff of farce if it weren’t so tragically unedifying. The DA has every right to march and be “provocative”. COSATU’s response betrays its own hard-won struggles in the past for the right to march, assemble and protest. Read >
Thursday, 24 May 2012
South African Civil Society Information Service (SACSIS), by Leonard Gentle
Angola: Gambling with elections (analysis)
Luanda (Angola) - According to today's announcement by the Council of the Republic, elections in Angola will be held on August 31. Read >
Thursday, 24 May 2012
Maka Angola, by Rafael Marques De Morais*
Egypt: And finally, to vote
Cairo (Egypt) – As Egyptians head to the polls Wednesday and Thursday to elect the country's first post-Mubarak president, local analysts say that voting results – even on the very eve of the balloting – remain impossible to predict. Read >
Thursday, 24 May 2012
Inter Press Service (IPS)
Africa: "A place where you will make money, not lose money"
Cape Town (South Africa) – Africa needs to reduce its dependency on foreign aid and get to the point of financing its own development, some of the continent’s key development experts say. Timing is optimal now that Africa is experiencing an economic boom with annual growth rates of up to eight percent. Read >
Thursday, 24 May 2012
Inter Press Service (IPS)
Africa: Political leaders 'learn little' from North African uprisings
Cape Town (South Africa) — Spurred by popular uprisings in North Africa, pressure to respect the human rights of all Africans is growing across the continent, but political leaders are standing in the way, says the internationally-respected lobby group, Amnesty International. Read >
Thursday, 24 May 2012
AllAfrica.com
South Africa: The President's penis
Over the past eighteen months there have been enough “Kaffir” slips of the tongue, from different echelons of White society, to prove that racism is alive and well and living on the tips of the tongues of most White South Africans. In many cases all it takes is a bit too much wine, a bump in the Spar or a little bit of fame and Eros from the rightwing, to let it slip. Read >
Tuesday, 22 May 2012
South African Civil Society Information Service (SACSIS), by Gillian Schutte*