New African articles from April 2007

New African archives from April 2007

Ghana: 6 March, the suit and the president.(Letter to the editor)
April 1, 2007... Diplomacy is a huge word; it is a word that makes you do a lot of things that you would not normally do. But you do these things because it means you have the wellbeing of the other person at heart or you want to appear to have their wellbeing...

What a delight.(Letter to the editor)
April 1, 2007... When flying home from a holiday in Ghana, I discovered two magazines in the seat pocket in front of me. They were: African Business, and New African. Immediately, I had something to do--read. As I began reading these magazines, delight...

Stealing a nation.(Letter to the editor)
April 1, 2007... Is it within UN jurisdiction that a bigger nation can just seize or take over a smaller one because of its selfish interest, thereby denying the smaller nation's people the right to live where they were born? This is absolutely painful,...

Is Oprah really to the rescue?(Letter to the editor)
April 1, 2007... I would like the opportunity to raise a few issues regarding the article: "Oprah to the rescue?" by Pusch Commey in your February issue. Is the Oprah Academy a model for pan-Africanism, as is being implied, or is it another front for...

Slavery reparations are in order.(Letter to the editor)
April 1, 2007... I disagree with Francis Damprani's assertion that apologising for slavery is unnecessary (Letters, NA, March). Even his reference to black Aborigines smacks of ill will and contempt. To illustrate the point, African dictators like Mobutu...

AU's new policy shift.(Letter to the editor)
April 1, 2007... I read with great interest the article: AU: From non-interference to non-indifference (NA, March). Despite Prof Alpha Konare's championing a new policy, it has to be said that the record of the African Union so far indicates that it has hardly...

Confessions of a CIA agent: ... how the imperial powers control Africa by remote control.(Chief of Station, Congo: Fighting the Cold War in a Hot Zone by Larry Devlin)(Book review)
April 1, 2007... Larry Devlin was the CIA chief of station in DRCongo in 1960 when the American president, Dwight D. Eisenhower, authorised the assassination of the Congolese prime minister, Patrice Lumumba, by lethal poisoning. Devlin was given the job to kill...

Sierra Leone: what use the Special Court?(Justice)(Sam Hinga Norman of Civil Defence Force dies)
April 1, 2007... The sudden death on 27 January of Chief Sam Hinga Norman, Sierra Leone's former deputy defence minister and coordinator of the Civil Defence Force (CDF), who had been standing trial at the UN-backed Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL) for the...

Axioms of effective leadership (Part 1). Having a leader in charge doesn't guarantee progress and profit unless the leader has what it takes for his leadership to function effectively. Of all the attributes of effective leaders, love appears to me the most critical.(Nuggets in a Nutshell)(Viewpoint essay)
April 1, 2007... Effective leadership is the craving of every organisation. No organisation appoints people to top positions merely to fill up existing vacancies. The board wants people who can hold the organisation, keep it running and move it forward. Men and...

Ghana: glory, glory ... except the suit; All roads led to the Independence Square in Accra on 6 March as Ghana marked the high-point of its year-long golden jubilee celebrations. But the occasion was marred by controversies right from the planning to the big day. Efam Dovi reports from Accra.(Feature)
April 1, 2007... On 6 March, President John Agyekum Kufuor led Ghanaians to celebrate 50 years of independence from British colonial rule. Independence Square in Accra was a fluttering scene of the country's national colours. Tens of thousands of people--young...

Darfur: the inside story; Alex de Waal, programme director at the Social Science Research Council, who participated in the various Darfur negotiations, gives a rare insight into why the Darfur conflict still rages on.(Feature)
April 1, 2007... Military intervention won't stop the killing in Darfur, Sudan. Those who are clamouring for troops to fight their way into Darfur are suffering from a salvation delusion. It is a simple reality that UN troops can't stop an ongoing war, and...

Sudan: "we're all Africans, we're all black", says President Bashir.(Feature)(Omar al Bashir on genocides at Darfur)
April 1, 2007... According to the US State Department's 2006 annual Country Reports on Human Rights Practices, released on 6 March, a horrific genocide is taking place in Darfur, that the Sudanese government and its Janjaweed militia are responsible, and that...

Nigeria: the power behind the throne (Part 3).(Feature)
April 1, 2007... In this last instalment of the countdown to the Nigerian elections on 30 April, Ola Sheyin gets to the bottom of why the same old faces come up again and again. "The real power behind the throne," he reveals, "are the Rulers who created the...

The wonders of Liberia's Blue Lake: the "discovery" of a natural lake in the pristine forests of Liberia's Bomi County is causing so much excitement that the catchment area is being touted as an investor's haven. Jarlawah Tonpo reports.(Feature)
April 1, 2007... Four kilometres away from Tubmanburg, the capital city of Bomi County, or 72 kilometres west of Monrovia, Liberia's capital, comes a natural wonder, a Blue Lake, whose tourism potentials are so vast that Senator Richard Devine, in whose...

Gambia's first university proves its worth: for the first 34 years of independence, The Gambia had no university. It got one in 1999, and the first batch of 11 medical students has graduated. Ebrima Baldeh reports from Banjul.(Feature)
April 1, 2007... Establishing the first-ever university in The Gambia (called the University of The Gambia--UTG) involved lengthy planning with international partners. In the beginning, there were several unanswered questions: How does a small African nation...

How The Daily Telegraph opened my eyes to racism; If you nobble a country politically at birth by handing it to your apes, because they can read and write English, you don't deserve to sit back in judgement over yourself and say, narcissistically: "how great we were. If only they had done what we instructed them to do!" Pure tosh!(Under the Neem Tree)
April 1, 2007... On the day that Ghana gained its independence, 6 March 1957, I thought the whole world loved our new nation that had just been born. Representing the world's richest country, the United States, at the celebrations was Richard M. Nixon, then...

Africans are too afraid to be free.(The Interview)(Interview)
April 1, 2007... "The Ivorian crisis revealed to me that Africans underestimate themselves and do not have confidence in themselves. Time has come for Africans to have confidence in themselves, to take their destiny into their own hands. Time has come for...

Impressive results in Africa: after years of pessimistic forecasts about the health situation in Africa, great strides have been made across the board. Mercy Eze evaluates some of the achievements that confounded the surrounding pessimism.(Focus on Health)(World Health Assembly)
April 1, 2007... The 30th World Health Assembly in 1977 selected the year 2000 as a benchmark for its "health for all" programme. It was hoped that by 2000, all the peoples of the world would have attained a certain level of health that would permit them to...

Carter: "fight against Guinea worm disease needs more effort"; "Ghana must do more to raise public awareness and ensure a sense of urgency to finally put an end to the social injustice of Guinea worm disease," says the Carter Centre.(Focus on Health)(Jimmy Carter)
April 1, 2007... Last year, Ghana set a deadline to stop the transmission of Guinea worm disease by March 2007 to coincide with the country's Golden Jubilee celebrations. The Ministry of Health, through its Guinea Worm Eradication Programme, has since stepped...

I think like an African: protecting the African brain is a task that we have to set our minds to from now on. It is a vital necessity. It has to be done irrespective of the hours, years, or pain expended. The African brain has to be defended at all costs.(Not in Black or White)(Column)
April 1, 2007... What do I mean by "the African brain"? The African brain is a brain that Europeans are jealous of. Why? Because it has multiple capacities, it is infinitely flexible, and it works and works and works. On and on and on, like a computer with...

Hi, dearie, you want business? An influx of African prostitutes, more a tide than a trickle, within the last two to three years has transformed the appearance and practice of the trade in the UK. Clayton Goodwin reports.(Diaspora)
April 1, 2007... The effect of an influx of African prostitutes to Europe in the last few years has been felt in many cities as far as Moscow where there are media reports of some hundreds of female African students staying on after their studies to pursue the...

Canada: "Africa is a lost cause".(Diaspora)
April 1, 2007... A new report by Canada's Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs has exposed the country's lukewarm attitude towards Africa, with politicians divided between those who believe that Africa is "a lost cause" and those who feel duty-bound to help the...

USA: "the best way to keep the nigger from voting is to see him the night before election"; A powerful new pictorial book, The Coming Free - The Struggle for African American Equality 1954-1966 has just been published. In this piece the author, David Rubel, provides a little taste of what the book offers.(Diaspora)(Book review)
April 1, 2007... Eighty-seven years ago (in 1920), African-Americans were still being lynched in their homeland. No one knows for certain how many African-Americans were lynched between 1880 and 1920, when the grisly practice was at its height, but probably...

African artistry.(Innovations)(electric cars are in trend)(Interview)
April 1, 2007... The future of the car is green. Global automakers are in a desperate race to come up with practical cars that conform to stringent environmental stipulations. General Motors, the world's biggest automaker, has come out with its spectacular...

Disability is not inability: out of Africa always comes something new, says the old adage. Allie Kallay reports on the first continental amputee football tournament staged in Freetown, Sierra Leone.(Football)(Amputee Sport Club )
April 1, 2007... Three African countries took part in the first All African Amputee Football Tournament hosted by the Amputee Sport Club of Sierra Leone in February, which was won by Ghana after defeating Liberia 4-3 in the final. Sierra Leone's Team A beat...

King Drogba.(Football)(Author abstract)
April 1, 2007... Didier Drogba, the Ivorian and Chelsea striker, was voted the African Footballer of the Year 2006 at a ceremony organised by the Confederation of African Football (CAF) in the Ghanaian capital, Accra, on 1 March. Drogba, who beat Cameron and...