Africa News blog

from Global News Journal:

Zimbabwe sinking fast

From a distance it is always hard to picture just how hard life is in Zimbabwe and to imagine how much worse it can get. For so long we have been writing about economic collapse, inflation statistics beyond comprehension, the fact that at least a quarter of the country has fled to seek work abroad and that life expectancy has tumbled.

Commentators have long spoken of the dangers of a possible ‘meltdown’. The signs of what that might look like have grown stronger this week.

The death toll from the worst cholera epidemic in recent records is near 500 – and possibly double – with shortages of water in Harare and elsewhere and a health system hopelessly ill equipped to cope. Not so long ago, one of the region’s more prosperous countries would probably have been able to prevent an outbreak of cholera and would certainly have been able to treat it.

Unprecedented clashes on Monday between what the army described as “indisciplined” soldiers and Zimbabweans have added to fears the situation could get out of hand. The army understandably said it was worried by the troubles, put down by police. As too many other African countries have found out, angry soldiers can prove a danger to everyone.

Banks are so short of cash that queuing for almost worthless notes has become a full time occupation for some of those lucky enough to – in theory at least – have jobs. But the amount of cash the banks can give out each day is often not enough to buy a loaf of bread.

President Robert Mugabe's government says the health system and economy are foundering because of sanctions imposed by Western powers it says are trying to oust him for seizing thousands of white-owned farms and redistributing the land to black Zimbabweans.

Mugabe’s critics, such as opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai, say it is his policies that have ruined Zimbabwe.

Uganda rebels keep peace on hold

In the middle of the small village of Nabanga there is a clearing in the thick bush where tough south Sudanese grass keeps growing despite the increasing dry season heat. This is the helipad.

For the last two years, U.N. choppers have dropped mediators and dignitaries here among the small huts and careful vegetable plots to try to bring the Ugandan rebel Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) to peace and disarmament.

But last weekend, just a few kilometers away, LRA leader Joseph Kony again refused to sign the peace deal that could end decades of conflict that badly affected south Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo and devastated northern Uganda.

The conflict has little direct impact in northern Uganda these days, but Nabanga residents still live in the shadow of LRA soldiers. In June, 23 people, including 14 southern Sudanese soldiers, were killed in a suspected attack.

“This is a problem,” Nabanga youth leader Yohan Philemona said when he heard that Kony would not sign. The village used to have a thriving border market with next-door Congo, but LRA attacks have diminished it together with the population.

“With peace, immediately, all these would come back,” trader Esa Michael said. Like Philemona and others he does not know what could happen next. He only hears bits of news from the radio, he said.

Michael is sceptical of the peace process but some of Nabanga’s people are now in the jungle with the Ugandan rebels and trying to use force against them is by no means an option without problems.

Managing anger in the Niger delta

Much of the news that comes out of the Niger Delta, the vast network of creeks home to Africa’s biggest oil and gas industry, is generated either by militant leaders claiming spectacular attacks on oil industry installations or by the military, keen to publicise its victories flushing out crude oil thieves from camps nestled deep in the mangroves.

Rarely heard are the voices of the “boys” who have taken up arms and make up the rank and file of the militant gangs. Oil theft on an industrial scale or kidnappings for ransom make some of their bosses rich. Peace negotiations see others rewarded with the veneer of political legitimacy and a comfortable new government-funded lifestyle. But the grunts tend to share little of the spoils.

So an initiative to take them out of the militant camps and send them abroad to be immersed in the teachings of non-violent activists from Gandhi to Martin Luther King Jr and Nelson Mandela raised – after the initial scepticism – a strong dose of curiosity. After the attempt to “reorientate their psyches”, the candidates would be schooled in skills meant to make them employable once they returned back home.

Would they be convinced that they could renounce violence and still fight for their rights? Did they really believe that theirs was a political struggle or were they simply interested in emulating some of their leaders and growing rich from stolen crude, ransom money and government pay-offs?

from Global News Journal:

Fighting graft in Africa. Or not.

 A little while back, we asked who is and isn’t fighting corruption effectively in Africa. This week, a number of examples bring us back to the subject.

In Tanzania, two former ministers have been charged with flouting procurement rules over the award of a tender for auditing gold mining back in 2002. The pair, who deny wrongdoing, served in the government of President Jakaya Kikwete’s predecessor Benjamin Mkapa. One of them also served under Kikwete himself.

Tanzania’s pledge to fight corruption is under close donor scrutiny and given the level of aid that Tanzania gets - more than one tenth of GDP by 2005 figures - it has little choice but to show willing. There have been doubts in the past, however, about how serious the government really was about going after the most senior and the best connected.

from Global News Journal:

Drugs and guns in Guinea-Bissau

Members of Guinea-Bissau's unruly armed forces have blotted the military's record again with another attack against the country's political institutions. Early on Sunday, Nov. 23, renegade soldiers, their faces hooded, sprayed the Bissau residence of President Joao Bernardo "Nino" Vieira with machine-gun and rocket-propelled grenade fire. The president survived unhurt this latest apparent attempt to topple him.

But The attack underlined the fragility of the small, cashew nut-exporting West African nation, one of the poorest in the world and a former Portuguese colony which has suffered a history of bloody coups, mutinies and uprisings since it won independence in 1974 after a bush war led by Amilcar Cabral. The assault followed parliamentary elections on Nov. 16 which donors were hoping would restore stability and put in place a new government capable of resisting the serious threat posed by powerful Latin American cocaine-trafficking cartels who use Guinea-Bissau as a staging post to smuggle drugs to Europe.

How can a little-known African country like Guinea-Bissau, prostrated by poverty, its government and military undermined by the corrupting influence of multi-million dollar drug-trafficking, dig itself out of underdevelopment?

from Global News Journal:

What should the world do about Somalia?

Islamist militants imposing a strict form of Islamic law are knocking on the doors of Somalia's capital, the country's president fears his government could collapse -- and now pirates have seized a super-tanker laden with crude oil heading to the United States from Saudi Arabia.

Chaos, conflict and humanitarian crises in Somalia are hardly new. It's a poor, dry nation where a million people live as refugees and 10,000 civilians have been killed in the Islamist-led insurgency of the last two years. A fledgling peace process looks fragile. Any hopes an international peacekeeping force will soon come to the rescue of a country that has become the epitome of anarchic violence are optimistic, at best.

But besides causing instability in the Horn of Africa, the turmoil onshore is spilling into the busy waters of the Gulf of Aden. The European Union and NATO have beefed up patrols of this key trade route linking Asia to Europe via the Suez Canal as more and more ships fall prey to piracy. Attacks off the coast of east Africa also threaten vital food aid deliveries to Somalia.

As insurance premiums for ships rocket and carriers start taking the long route from Asia to Europe around the Cape of Good Hope to avoid attack, the cost of manufactured goods and commodities such as oil is likely to rise -- all at a time of global economic uncertainty and looming recession in major industrialised countries.