New African articles from December 2004

New African archives from December 2004

Short-term pain for long-term gain.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
December 1, 2004... I am a white European (UK) currently living in The Gambia with my Gambian wife and our half-Gambian-half-English little boy of six months. As a person who prefers to look forward to solutions rather than constantly back at causes, I am...

Maathai the great.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
December 1, 2004... On behalf of all Kenyans, allow me to congratulate this year's Nobel peace prize winner, our very own Professor Wangari Maathai. Her win of the coveted prize has triggered a wave of joy in all of Kenya. It could not have come at a better time....

Aggrey of Africa.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
December 1, 2004... I read the piece on Dr James E. K. Aggrey (NA, Oct) by Prof Felix Konotey-Ahulu with interest, but I beg to make a little necessary correction. Aggrey's mother, Abena Andua, was a direct relative of the Asantehene, Kwaku Dua II. So if...

Aggrey was right.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
December 1, 2004... Thanks to New African, I am now more aware of the important issues affecting my continent, Africa. The article on Dr James E. K. Aggrey (NA, Oct) has made me understand myself better as an African. "If you educate a man, you educate an...

Does media exposure equal greatest?(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
December 1, 2004... Precise leadership profiles are more important and lasting than actual leaders and prominent media-made personalities. This point was even more apparent while reading your August/September 2004 issue cover story, "100 Greatest Africans of All...

More on Teresa Kerry.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
December 1, 2004... Referring to Antonio de Figuerido's letter (In defence of Teresa Heinz Kerry, NA, Oct), I admit that I always admire the author's lucid monthly columns, after all he displays more genuine love and passion for Africa than some of its native...

Whither our leaders?(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
December 1, 2004... I appreciate K. Addai-Addai's sincere and frank admittance that their generation has failed the African youth of today (NA, Oct). But the same cannot be said of many African leaders, past and present, who see and brand themselves as heroes of...

The land of good hope.(Baffour's Beefs)
December 1, 2004... "It is one thing to show a man that he is in error, and another to put him in possession of truth"--John Locke, the English philosopher. Perhaps it is too early for African nationalists to begin to celebrate the second liberation of...

Moving Nigeria forward.(Cover Story)
December 1, 2004... No other nation in Africa mirrors the complexity that is Nigeria, a federation of 36 states presided over by Abuja in the centre of the country. Several of them are more resource-rich than some African nations. Under democracy, there are...

Nigeria: what the governors say.(Interview)(Interview)
December 1, 2004... How to move Nigeria forward continues to exercise the minds of all its citizens, and particularly the political elite. Ben Asante went to interview a selection of governors on how to restructure the country. Here are excerpts: 'We must...

Nigeria: we deserve a permanent security council seat; Recent debate on the need to reform the UN Security Council by providing new permanent seats to countries representing all five continents in a changed world, has shed light on Nigeria's credentials for the position. Ben Asante reports.
December 1, 2004... The African Union (AU) has been slow in coming out with a collective decision on who gets Africa's permanent seat (or seats) at the UN Security Council (UNSC). Senegal has already asked for two seats for Africa: one permanent and the other a...

Sit down, R. W. Johnson; An old African proverb sums it up in a few words: "until the lions have their own historians, the stories of hunting will always glorify the hunters." R. W. Johnson had better sit down.(Lest we forget)
December 1, 2004... If there is anything more contemptible than kicking someone when they are down, it is to kick them when they are trying to get up. This is, however, what happened to the first postcolonial governments in Africa within a few years of coming to...

Cote d'Ivoire: the French connection.(Around Africa)
December 1, 2004... The strained relations between France and its favoured African ally, Cote d'Ivoire, have finally snapped, leaving in its wake death, destruction and distrust. For the first time since the Ivorian conflict started, Abidjan has publicly declared...

Eritrea: no reprieve for journalists; Dozens of local journalists have been detained without trial by the Eritrean government. One of them, Dawit Isaak, who holds dual Swedish and Eritrean nationality, has become a cause celebre in Sweden. Simon Reeves reports from Stockholm.(Around Africa)
December 1, 2004... Dawit Isaak has been detained without trial in Eritrea for more than three years. He is one of dozens of local journalists to be so detained, and in spite of diplomatic activity by the Swedish government and calls by media and human rights...

Namibia: landslide for Nujoma's successor; The result was never in much doubt, but the size of Hifikepunye Pohamba's victory in the mid-November elections surprised many. Stuart Price reports.(Around Africa)
December 1, 2004... When the Namibian people went to the polls in mid-November, it was for the first time they were not re-electing the country's founding father, Sam Nujoma. It was his successor, Hifikepunye Pohamba, who ran on the South West African People's...

Somalia: a new beginning? After 14 years without a central government, Somalia now has a new leader, with the mountainous task of rebuilding the country. President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed is a former army colonel from the self-declared autonomous region of Puntland, but will he be equal to the task?, asks Farhiya Ali Ahmed.(Around Africa)
December 1, 2004... The year was 1978. Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed, a senior military officer together with other high-ranking commanders were plotting the overthrow of President Siad Barre. The coup failed and many of the officers implicated in it were arrested and...

Africa: landmines still pose serious threat; According to the UN, "sub-Saharan Africa is the most heavily mined region in the world", but five African countries have still not signed the treaty banning such weapons. Campaigners want them to do so now, reports Peter Moszynski.(Around Africa)
December 1, 2004... Ethiopia, Egypt, Libya, Morocco and Somalia--the only five African countries yet to sign the Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines and their Destruction--have come under pressure...

Africa: leaders must work with academia; African leaders should work with their academic communities for the benefit of the continent, says the African Union chairman, Alpha Oumar Konare. Momodou Musa Secka reports.(Around Africa)
December 1, 2004... Alpha Oumar Konare, the chairman of the African Union, has called on intellectuals from within and outsideAfrica to contribute and help tackle the challenges facing the continent. He was speaking at the first Conference of Intellectuals from...

Uganda: green light for democracy? A ruling by the Ugandan Constitutional Court has effectively quashed a law restricting political parties from participating in elections. Tom Okello reports from Kampala.(Around Africa)
December 1, 2004... It now appears that Uganda is shaping itself up for the return of political pluralism ahead of the presidential and parliamentary elections slated for early 2006. The Constitutional Court's (CC) mid-November ruling came about as a result of a...

Cote d'Ivoire: what is Gbagbo playing at? President Laurent Gbagbo must learn to swallow his pride. In this ambiguous political situation, to stand on absolutes is to engage in pretence, and pretence has no place in a situation where lives continue to be lost needlessly, and the threat of more bloodshed dawns with the coming of every day. Cameron Duodu writes.(Comment)
December 1, 2004... President Laurent Gbagbo has confounded everyone who entertained hopes, when he assumed office in 2000, that he was going to provide Cote d'Ivoire with the type of leadership it needs, after enduring three authoritarian regimes--that of Felix...

Mbeki 'the natives are coming!'.(Comment)
December 1, 2004... "And so it came about that the poor of the world began to emerge as a threat to those who have much to lose. For the rich to part with what they have, even in their long- term self-interest, they needed to be frightened virtually out of their...

Abia State: a model for all.(Special Report: Abia State, Nigeria)
December 1, 2004... Abia State is Nigeria's technology manufacturing centre and enterprise zone. It serves both the domestic and ECOWAS markets. In recent years, Abia's economic importance under Governor Orji Uzor Kalu has reverberated far, compelling the World...

Abia: a state driven by enterprise.(Special Report: Abia State, Nigeria)
December 1, 2004... Abia State was carved out of Imo State in August 1991 during the reign of General Ibrahim Babangida. But it is only over the last five years under the leadership of Governor Orji Uzor Kalu that the state has truly achieved the potential that...

How Africa came to grow tea.(Feature)
December 1, 2004... Kenya is the second biggest exporter of tea in the world, after Sri Lanka (formerly Ceylon). But how did Africa come to grow tea? Roy Moxham, author of The Great Hedge of India (2001) and The Freelander (1990), spent 13 years in Africa, five of...

Mozambique: small portraits of big women; Paola Rolletta on the women of Mozambique who, like most African women, are the backbone of society and yet work against the odds.(Feature)
December 1, 2004... It is difficult not to fall into veteran feminist cliches when writing about women, especially Mozambican women. Women represent 52% of this country, they are its backbone, and yet its most fragile and poorest sector, even though the prime...

So farewell then, Colin Powell: he was said to be the "acceptable face" of the Bush administration but Colin Powell had become what we call in Ghana "Simpa Panyin"--a man who dressed in the costume of authority but has no actual power. Ironically, it is another African-American, Condoleezza Rice, who has taken his place as secretary of state.(Under the Neem Tree)
December 1, 2004... When General Colin Powell, the then much-respected former chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff (who had defeated Saddam Hussein in the 1991 Gulf War) was appointed secretary of state by George W. Bush in 2000, some thought Powell had made a...

Oil and gas: new powers make their mark.(New African Market)
December 1, 2004... Current developments in the African oil and gas sector provide an intriguing mixture of the old and new. While established producers such as Nigeria, Angola and Algeria continue to go from strength to strength, new oil and gas powers such as...

USA: the struggle for freedom and self-respect.(Diaspora)
December 1, 2004... 1 December 2004 marks 49 years since Mrs Rosa Parks was arrested in Montgomery, Alabama, for refusing to give up her seat on a bus to a white man--an arrest that gave birth to the civil rights movement in the US. It shows how far America, then...

'I have a dream': "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character ... and if America is to be a great nation, this must become true"--Martin Luther King Jr, from his famous speech at the march on Washington, 28 August 1963. Below is an excerpt.(Diaspora)
December 1, 2004... "... I say to you today, my friends, that in spite of the difficulties and frustrations of the moment, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out...

Haitian magic: Beverly Andrews on one of Haiti's visual artists, Franz Lamonthe, whose work serves as a bridge between the island nation and the African mother continent. Lamonth was in London recently to exhibit his work.(Arts)(Critical Essay)
December 1, 2004... Of all the islands in the Caribbean, Haiti is the one with perhaps the closest connection to Africa--from the practise of its indigenous religion, to its revolution against colonisation and its struggles for post-colonial political stability....

Morocco: musical inspiration in Essaouira; Aman te Water takes us on a musical pilgrimage to the south coast of Morocco, to somewhere called Essaouira--the Windy City, the village of trance, home to the Gnaoua and Jimi Hendrix. It is the kind of place tourists can't bear to leave.(Arts)
December 1, 2004... Lost somewhere on the south coast of Morocco, caught between the High Atlas mountains, the Sahara sands and the sea, lies Essaouira, a crossroads for Arab, African and European culture. The wild sands, islands and curious blend of traditions...

Brain drain or brain gain? The remittances of 10 million African professionals who have left the continent in search of greener pastures abroad, have become one of the main planks holding the home economies together. So, is it brain drain or brain gain?, asks Gilbert Manda.(Debate)
December 1, 2004... Philip Emeagwali, the Nigerian mathematician and computer scientist, is a scion of his field. Bill Clinton, the former US president, once described him as "one of the greatest minds of the information age". CNN called him "a father of the...