Subscribe to the RSS News Feed for Africa General

1.	USA/Africa: Two to tango
	Author: edited by William Minter	Date Written: 8 February 2010
	Primary Category: Africa General	Document Origin: AfricaFocus Bulletin
	Secondary Category: -none-	Source URL: http://www.africafocus.org
	Key Words: USA/Africa: Two to Tango
	Summary & Comment: This AfricaFocus Bulletin contains the executive summary and recommendations from "Keeping Foreign Corruption out of the United States: Four Case Histories," released in hearings held last week by the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. The full 330-page report is in pdf on th . . . [expand]
2.	Solidarity with Haiti
	Author: edited by William Minter	Date Written: 2 February 2010
	Primary Category: Africa General	Document Origin: AfricaFocus Bulletin
	Secondary Category: -none-	Source URL: http://www.africafocus.org
	Key Words: Haiti, Pan-African solidarity,
	Summary & Comment: This AfricaFocus Bulletin contains an appeal from the new "Africa for Haiti" coalition, excerpts from Dr. Farmer’s testimony to the U.S. Senate, and a commentary by Monika Kalra Varma and Kerry Kennedy, of the RFK Center for Human Rights. WM
3.	WSF: Reconciling social and environmental needs
	Author: Mario Osava, Salvador	Date Written: 1 February 2010
	Primary Category: Africa General	Document Origin: IPS/TerraViva
	Secondary Category: Economic Justice	Source URL: http://www.ips.org
	Key Words: WSF, needs, population, social, environmental,
	Summary & Comment: New forms of international negotiation have a hold in trade and climate change, and decisions can no longer be adopted without the input of countries such as those of Africa. It is impossible to gauge the scale of the “multifaceted” crises the world faces. DN
4.	Why the nation-state is wrong for Africa
	Author: Amira Kheir	Date Written: 28 January 2010
	Primary Category: Africa General	Document Origin: Pambazuka News 467
	Secondary Category: -none-	Source URL: http://www.pambazuka.org
	Key Words: nation-state, alternative, conflict, politcal institutions,
	Summary & Comment: According to the author African nations use of an inappropriate governance structure, the nation-state mode that is an inherited system that does not match the continent’s needs and potential. Kheir argues for a state that functions as an administrative centre for legislation and organisation and is free for a future of egalitarian pluralism. DN
5.	African nations mobilize massive relief efforts for Haiti
	Author: Charles W. Corey	Date Written: 26 January 2010
	Primary Category: Africa General	Document Origin: Afrik.com
	Secondary Category: -none-	Source URL: http://en.afrik.com/
	Key Words: African donors, relief efforts, Haiti,
	Summary & Comment: The list of African donor nations joining with the international community to donate money and lifesaving or emergency support services to the earthquake-stricken people of Haiti continues to grow day by day. DN
6.	How to think about China
	Author: Immanuel Wallerstein, Commentary No. 273	Date Written: 15 January 2010
	Primary Category: Africa General	Document Origin: Agence Global via Debate list
	Secondary Category: -none-	Source URL:
	Key Words: China, Wallerstein,
	Summary & Comment: The author asks but does not answer three questions of sharp debate: Is China essentially a socialist country or essentially a capitalist one? Is China still part of the South or has it become part of the North? and Is China a leading anti-imperialist power or an imperialist one? DN
7.	China’s Foreign Minister completes 6 nation African trip
	Author: Stephen Marks	Date Written: 15 January 2010
	Primary Category: Africa General	Document Origin: Pambazuka News 465
	Secondary Category: Economic Justice	Source URL: http://www.pambazuka.org
	Key Words: China, India,
	Summary & Comment: The author recounts the just completed visits of China’s Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi’s six-nation tour of Africa and of India’s Vice President Hamid Ansari three nation tour. DN

News from Additional Sources

Pambazuka News :Pan-African Postcard

1. Loving each other won’t cure ‘negative ethnicity’
   While initiatives seeking to address ‘negative ethnicity’ in Kenya are ‘potentially useful and well meaning’, L. Muthoni Wanyeki believes that they fail to get to the core of the problem. There is, she argues, no real understanding of what equality and non-discrimination actually mean. Wanyeki deems there to be a misplaced focus on ‘whether or not we like each other’. She holds rather, that tensions in Kenya have arisen because there is an unhealthy cycle of discrimination and stereotyping that has become normalised. The focus in remedying this cannot then be on making Kenyans ‘like’ one another, Wanyeki argues, but on how to ‘regulate whether and how those feelings translate into actions; into discrimination’.
2. Al-Faisal’s gone, questions linger
   - http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Quran_cover.jpgFollowing the arranged departure from Kenya of the Muslim preacher Abdullah al-Faisal back to Jamaica, L. Muthoni Wanyeki reflects on the curious circumstances behind the preacher's transportation out of the country.
3. Tales from a post-conflict zone
   L. Muthoni Wanyeki shares anecdotes from a friend working for a UN mission in a post-conflict African country. While the stories are amusing, says Wanyeki, what they really show is how hard it is ‘to re-construct even a semblance of normalcy following a war’.
4. Dictatorship more dangerous than climate change
   Dictatorship presents 'a far more perilous threat to the survival of Africans than climate change', Alemayehu G. Mariam writes in this week’s Pambazuka News. But with the widespread acknowledgement that global warming ‘could affect Africa disproportionately’, and that the continent is ‘entitled to assistance to overcome the effects of greenhouse emissions caused by the industrialised countries’, Mariam argues that its dictators ‘are using global warming as their new preferred ideology behind which they can hide and ply their trade of corruption'.
5. South Africa's National Planning Commission and tackling poverty
   In light of South Africa's entrenched poverty, William Gumede argues that the country's National Planning Commission must operate 'like the command centre of a country at war'. Tackling poverty and achieving economic progress require harnessing every resource and talent at the country's disposal, Gumede writes, and instilling a culture 'where failure is not an option'.