NewsTrust - Africa - Most Recent Stories: Opinion (Mainstream)

12 Shocking Ideas That Could Change the World

Tue, 22 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Wired - Sep. 22 (Opinion) - Warning: The people's ideas expressed here may be dangerous. For this year's list, we walked right past the usual suspects and went looking for trouble.

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We must stop the 'vulture funds' that feed on the world's poor

Fri, 18 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Independent - By Johann Hari - Sep. 18 (Opinion) - Would you ever march up to a destitute African who is shivering with Aids and demand he "pay back" tens of thousands of pounds he didn't borrow – with interest? I only ask because this is in effect happening, here, in British and American courts, time after time. Some of the richest people in the world are making profit margins of 500 per cent by shaking money out of the poorest people in the world – for debt they did not incur.

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Bail out Somalia to curb the pirates?

Wed, 15 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Christian Science Monitor - Apr. 15 (Editorial) - ... without US leadership, it's unlikely that Europe or the United Nations will do more than support beefing up the international naval presence off Somalia's coast. Obama still needs to keep probing for new ways for all concerned parties to solve, or at least better contain, this thorny problem.

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The West should focus on North Africa

Tue, 07 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Christian Science Monitor - By Dana Moss - Apr. 07 (Opinion) - For North Africa, 2009 is a year of elections. Regrettably, these elections – this week's presidential elections in Algeria, Tunisia's presidential and legislative elections in October, and Morocco's local council elections in June – attest not to the vibrancy of democracy in the region, but rather to its lingering authoritarianism.

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More Annals of Global Greed Inc.

Sat, 14 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - By New York Times Editorial - Feb. 14 (Editorial) - Halliburton and its former KBR subsidiary have agreed to pay $579 million in fines to settle criminal and regulatory charges of having bribed foreign officials to win billions in construction contracts. There may be some taxpayer comfort in the fact that this scandal was rooted in Nigeria, not Iraq, where the Halliburton megacorporation (you know, the one Dick Cheney ran before he became vice president) reaped multibillions as the Bush administration’s most favored no-bid contractor.

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Greg Laden's Blog : How much is the world spending on neglected disease research and development?

Wed, 04 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0800

ScienceBlogs.com - Feb. 04 (Opinion) - How much are we actually spending on the development of pharmaceutical tools to treat HIV/AIDS, TB, leichmaniasis, malaria and sleeping sickness?

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To save Zimbabwe, South Africa must step up

Fri, 19 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Christian Science Monitor - By John Hughes - Dec. 19 (Opinion) - Once one of the most beautiful and bountiful lands in Africa, Zimbabwe is fast becoming the worst disaster on the continent since Rwanda and Darfur.

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How can we stand by as genocide again threatens the Congo?

Mon, 03 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0800

The Age - By Andre Renzaho - Nov. 03 (Opinion) - With the international financial situation becoming the main priority for world leaders, little attention has been given to what is unfolding in Congo. Rwanda has seized the opportunity to join Nkunda to complete unfinished business: the "ethnic cleansing" of Hutus of Rutshuru and Masisi districts.

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The downfall of Thabo Mbeki

Mon, 22 Sep 2008 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - Sep. 22 (Editorial) - The heir to Nelson Mandela came to power nine years ago on a tidal wave of goodwill. In Thabo Mbeki, South Africa thought it had found the manager it needed to bring order to its well-intentioned disarray. Not only that. Here was the economist whose adherence to the strictures of neoliberalism would herald a decade of unprecedented economic growth. Here was a leader who could inspire a continent. Time magazine rated him as one of the world's most influential leaders. It is an astonishing and not altogether explicable fact that a man who entered office so highly regarded on the national and international stage leaves it such an isolated and friendless figure.

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Bush's enduring legacy in Africa

Thu, 04 Sep 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Boston Globe - By Andrew Natsios - Sep. 04 (Opinion) - When President Bush traveled to sub-Sahara Africa in February he was greeted by large and tumultuous crowds of admirers - which mystified many of his critics, who believe that the animosity toward his administration abroad is universal. But polling data from the Pew Foundation shows something different: Approval ratings for the United States exceed 80 percent in many African countries, some with large Muslim populations. In Darfur, many families name their newborn sons George Bush. What is it that the Bush administration did differently in Africa than it did elsewhere? Certainly one factor is that Africa is not the Middle East or central Asia where America is fighting two unpopular wars and where polls show America at an all-time low in public esteem. In Sudan, the United States played a central role as peacemaker in ending a 20-year civil war between the Arab north and African south, which killed 2 million people.

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A Dangerous Neighbor

Wed, 06 Aug 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Weekly Standard - By Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, Bill Roggio - Aug. 06 (Opinion) - A critical factor behind Afghanistan's deteriorating state is the turn of events in Pakistan, where the Taliban and al Qaeda have found a safe haven in recent years. After the October 2001 U.S. invasion of Afghanistan felled the Taliban, most of al Qaeda's senior leadership relocated to Pakistan's federally administered tribal areas, the remote and mountainous regions that border Afghanistan, and set about finding allies within tribal society.

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Democracy for Africa

Tue, 08 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Wall Street Journal - By Justice Malala - Apr. 08 (Opinion) - the achievements of a handful of leaders and countries such as Mr. Mogae's Botswana are undermined by strongmen like Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe.

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Are Kenyan runners stoking violence?

Fri, 22 Feb 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Foreign Policy - By Preeti Aroon - Feb. 22 (Opinion) - As anyone following the sport of running knows, a sizable chunk of the world's fastest runners hail from Kenya, a country rocked by violence after a disputed December 2007 election. Now a paragraph in a report by the International Crisis Group (ICG) says elite runners there may be funding, training, and commanding militias.

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Machetes and Elections

Thu, 21 Feb 2008 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - By Nicholas D. Kristof - Feb. 21 (Opinion) - The prime villain is President Mwai Kibaki, who would have been hailed as a hero if he had obeyed the will of the people in the December election. Instead, he -- and a cast of thugs around him -- appear to have stolen the election, starting a spiral of tribal violence that has killed more than 1,000 people and displaced 300,000. Mr. Kibaki's intransigence risks the collapse of his country, possibly even civil war.

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Seven Questions: What's the Matter with Kenya?

Wed, 20 Feb 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Foreign Policy - Feb. 20 (Interview) - The seeds of the current crisis were sown long ago, but the determined weeding took place between August 2004 and December 2007. Inequality is at the heart of it. In a place like Kenya, people can express their anger over economic inequality in regional or ethnic terms when the ruling elites aren't able to give people reasonable confidence that there is (or at least will be) equal access to economic opportunity and justice. Issues that give inequality meaning--the use of violence for political purposes, genuine land grievances, conspicuously corrupt leadership--have been bubbling under the surface for decades. These factors combined with rapid urbanization, high unemployment, especially among young males, ethnic political mobilization, the free flow of information, huge democratic expectations and, finally an incompetently rigged election, to ultimately boil over into a crisis. So, it's not just a 'tribal' thing.

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Taking the responsibility to protect

Tue, 19 Feb 2008 00:00:00 -0800

International Herald Tribune - By Desmond Tutu - Feb. 19 (Opinion) - The horrors of conflict in Africa continue today, but there is also a sign of how rapid response, with support from neighbors and the international community, can save lives and bring hope. In contrast to the crises in Rwanda in 1994 and Darfur in 2003, we see today in Kenya the formation of an international consensus that it is unacceptable to ignore violence of the kind that has occurred in recent months or to consider the crisis as purely an internal matter of the state.

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Uganda: Monster U.S. Recession Could Destroy Country

Wed, 23 Jan 2008 00:00:00 -0800

AllAfrica - Jan. 23 (Editorial) - We failed to see how a crisis in Kenya could affect Uganda's economy and yet we continue to unflinchingly peer into the proverbial dark abyss of poor planning, corruption and indebtness without any glimmer of light at the bottom.

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The real reason for Kenya's violence

Mon, 14 Jan 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Christian Science Monitor - By Jacqueline M. Klopp - Jan. 14 (Opinion) - The international community must realize that Kenya's violence today is fueled by strongmen on both sides of the political divide. They are exploiting ethnic identity, pitting one community against another, as a means to gain power. It is a practice with a long history in Kenyan politics.

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The Upside of Bush's Foreign Policy

Tue, 08 Jan 2008 00:00:00 -0800

New York Sun - By Arthur Brooks - Jan. 08 (Opinion) - And here's what fellow rocker-activist Bob Geldof has to say: " ... the Bush administration is the most radical -- in a positive sense -- in its approach to Africa since Kennedy."

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Why Africa fears Western medicine

Tue, 31 Jul 2007 10:18:26 -0700

International Herald Tribune - By Harriet A. Washington - Jul. 31 (Opinion) - To Westerners, the repatriation of five nurses and a doctor to Bulgaria last week after more than eight years' imprisonment meant the end of an unsettling ordeal. The medical workers, who in May 2004 were sentenced to death on charges of intentionally infecting hundreds of Libyan children with HIV, have been freed, and another international incident is averted. But to many Africans, the accusations, which have been validated by a guilty verdict and a promise to reimburse the families of the infected children with a $426 million payout, seem perfectly plausible. The medical workers' release appears to be the latest episode in a health care nightmare in which white and Western-trained doctors and nurses have harmed Africans - and have gone unpunished.

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The Invisible Cure: Africa, the West, and the Fight Against AIDS

Sun, 29 Jul 2007 12:32:43 -0700

New York Times - By John Donnelly - Jul. 29 (Review) - Halfway through "The Invisible Cure," Helen Epstein writes about finding a long-forgotten document in a small research library in Canada. Reading through the paper, Epstein says, "I felt as though a small stick of dynamite had gone off in my head." Epstein had unearthed a rare copy of a detailed study on the sexual behavior of Ugandans in the late 1980s and early '90s, a period that coincided with the country's historic drop in H.I.V. rates. In short, Epstein knew, the research done by Maxine Ankrah, an African-American academic, would give invaluable insights into what had halted the epidemic -- insights that could then be applied to other countries with high rates of H.I.V. and AIDS.

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Betting on Africa

Sun, 29 Jul 2007 09:24:53 -0700

Economist - Jul. 29 (Opinion) - Africa is the continent of the future and always will be. That cynical quip sums up how many investors feel about the dark continent. Yes, Africa may well have vast natural resources and enormous potential, but given the political turmoil, they do not want to touch it. But this is the age of globalisation, when investors feel free to boldly go where they had not gone before. After all, places that were previously regarded as exotic, from Bulgaria to Vietnam, are integrated into the global economy. Now it may be Africa's turn.

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Zimbabwe: 'Economics' Induces Behaviour Change in Men

Sat, 28 Jul 2007 12:35:38 -0700

AllAfrica - Jul. 28 (Opinion) - IS the decline in new HIV infections that this country is experiencing due to the fact that we as a people are now more responsible when it comes to our sexual behaviour or is it just the politics of the stomach? To be very honest, the number of men willing to spend the little extra money they remain with after buying what they need to get by, on women is fast dwindling. While it used to be common for some men to offer to buy ladies a drink in nightclubs, restaurants and other joints, that is now a thing of the past. t is a fact that buying a woman a drink was, for many men, one way of starting a conversation with a lady before going on to ask for their number or other favours in the past. Gone are those days, however!

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How, and How Not, to Stop AIDS in Africa

Wed, 25 Jul 2007 10:10:27 -0700

The New York Review of Books - By William Easterly - Jul. 25 (Review) - The stigma attached to the HIV-positive, and the implied general stigma for Africa, were tragically misguided. According to survey evidence Epstein provides, Africans are no more promiscuous than most other people, as measured by numbers of sexual partners in a lifetime, casual sexual encounters, and visits to prostitutes. As she says, sexual behavior in Africa is governed by strict rules; they are just different rules from those prevailing elsewhere. She argues that in many African countries the large numbers of people willing to follow those rules have a great deal to fear from AIDS; and they must know they cannot dismiss the problem of infection as one of a whoring minority. The international aid agencies and Western governments are only now belatedly coming around to Epstein's perspective (which is based on the findings of a number of independent researchers), over two decades after the start of the epidemic, and they still don't know quite how to handle it.

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Botswana: No HIV/Aids Vaccine Yet

Tue, 29 May 2007 22:26:21 -0700

AllAfrica - By Anthony S. Fauci - May. 29 (Statement) - [Anthony Fauci is the Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, a part of the U.S. National Institutes of Health. He advises the White House and the Department of Health and Human Services on global Aids issues, and on initiatives to bolster medical and public health preparedness against emerging infectious disease threats such as pandemic influenza. He was the world's 10th most-cited HIV/Aids researcher from 1996-2006.] It is now a quarter-century since the acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) was recognised. The knowledge that has been gained since then has been breathtaking, and the pace at which basic research has been translated into lifesaving treatments is unprecedented. The discovery of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) as the cause of Aids was followed by elucidation of its pathogenesis, natural history and epidemiology, the creation of a diagnostic blood test and the development of antiretroviral drugs.

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