The Somali pirates who released a Saudi supertanker got a $3 million reward, according to their associates. Good money in one of the world’s poorest and most war-blighted corners.

But the waters off Somalia are getting ever more crowded with foreign ships trying to stop the pirates. As well as potentially making life more difficult for the hijackers, it has become a real illustration of the much talked about global power shift from West to East in terms of military might as well as economic strength.

This raises a question as to whether this will lead to close cooperation, rivalry or something altogether more unpredictable.

This week the United States said it planned to launch a specific anti-piracy force, an offshoot of a coalition naval force already in the region since the start of the U.S. “War on Terror” in Afghanistan in 2001.

It wasn’t clear just what this would mean in practical terms since U.S. ships were already part of the forces trying to stop the modern day buccaneers, equipped with speedboats and rocket-propelled grenades. It was also unclear which countries would be joining the U.S.-led force rather than operating under their own mandates.

The U.S. announcement came two days after Chinese ships started an anti-piracy mission in the Gulf of Aden. This is the first time Chinese warships have sailed to Africa, barring goodwill visits, since Ming Dynasty eunuch Admiral Zheng commanded an armada 600 years ago.

As my colleague Sanjeev Miglani wrote last month, the Chinese deployment was being scrutinised by the strategic community from New Delhi to Washington.

The Chinese had actually been catching up to other Asian countries. India already had ships in the region. So did Malaysia, whose navy foiled at least one pirate attack this month. Reasserting its might, Russia had sent a warship after the big surge in piracy in the Gulf of Aden between Somalia and Yemen. The European Union has a mission there.

For Asian countries there is good reason to send warships. This is the main trade route to markets in Europe and their ships have been seized. Attacks on shipping push up insurance rates and force some vessels to use more fuel on the longer, safer route around Africa instead of taking the Suez Canal.

But there certainly appears to be evidence too to back up the U.S. National Intelligence Council’s “Global Trends 2025” report late last year that highlighted the relative decline in Washington’s long term influence in the face of the rise of China and India.

As well as being a chance for the world’s old and new powers to show their strength in terms of numbers, the anti-piracy operations off Somalia could prove something of a test of effectiveness.

While the hardware the navies have will always outclass that of the pirates, the new powers may have an advantage in more robust rules of engagement. That might lead to mistakes, however. In November, India trumpted its success in sinking a pirate “mother ship”. It later turned out that a Thai ship carrying fishing equipment had been sunk while it was being hijacked. Most of the crew were reported lost.

There is a lot of sea to cover, one of the reasons why naval forces have had so much difficulty in stopping the hijackings, but the presence of so many navies in the same area at the same time must raise questions over how well they are going to work together.

Will this become a model for cooperation in a new world order? Or are there dangers? Might this also end up being a display of how little either East or West can do in the face of attacks by armed groups from a failed state with which nobody from outside seems prepared to come to grips? What do you think?

(Picture: Commanding officer of a U.S. Navy guided-missile cruiser monitors the pirated ship off Somalia REUTERS/U.S. Navy/Handout)
(Picture: Forces from French naval vessel “Jean de Vienne”, seen in this January 4, 2009 photo, capture 19 Somali pirates in the Gulf of Aden. REUTERS/French Navy/handout)

Ghana's epic nail-biter of an election has finally ended with opposition leader John Atta Mills being declared the winner by the narrowest of margins: barely 40,000 votes out of 9 million, or less than 0.5 percent of votes from the past week's run-off.

Virtually everybody was expecting a close race, but the contest got tighter and increasingly acrimonious as both rival camps sensed power was within their reach. As the vote went down to the wire, to be decided with delayed voting held in one final constituency on Jan 2, the ruling New National Party (NNP) announced a boycott and launched legal proceedings to postpone the poll and freeze the announcement of results. 
 
After a year that has seen electoral bloodshed in Kenya and Zimbabwe one analyst who has followed the vote closely warned that incidents of violence during the polls indicated Ghana "may be coming close to that abyss of no-return".
 
Yet shortly after the Electoral Commission announced results on Saturday, Akufo-Addo conceded defeat, congratulated Mills and both candidates were stressing the need for cooperation and consensus between their two parties.

What a difference a few hours makes - although Whether they are able to make that promise a reality for the party rank and file caught up in the bitter rivalries of the past few months, only time will tell.
 
So what was all the fuss about? By the most alarming interpretations, Ghana has stepped back from the brink of chaos. Others say it was just healthy competition.
 
Some observers say the simple fact the country's institutions, especially its Electoral Commission, were able to cope with such a tense, tight race and ensure both sides respected the results, is proof of the deep roots democracy has in Ghana. That is a point of pride for many Ghanaians aware of their country's history as the first sub-Saharan colony to achieve independence and one of the first to adopt democratic politics under outspoken former coup-leader Jerry Rawlings, who appointed Mills as his vice-president in the 1990s.
 
So is the bitter wrangling between the two main parties a "slur on Ghana's democratic credentials", as one analyst put it? Or should the country be proud that even such a hard-fought election should end without widespread violence? Do the past month's elections show Ghana's democracy is alive and well, or expose its weaknesses? How does it compare with elections elsewhere in Africa? And, given many people say there is little difference between the manifestoes of the centre-right NPP and Mills's centre-left National Democratic Congress (NDC), was the election worth the risk?

(Picture: Supporters of Mills of opposition NDC party celebrate their candidate's win after elections in Accra. Luc Gnago / Reuters)

Two Algerians were detained by Egyptian authorities recently while trying to obtain a work visa from the Israeli embassy in Cairo, a local newspaper has reported, despite the fact that Algeria and Israel are still officially at war.
 
A survey, published by an Algerian newspaper, showed that up to half of Algeria’s young men are tempted by the idea of fleeing to Europe as illegal migrants to escape misery at home.
 
Why do so many people from a country – renowned by many in the Arab world for sacrificing up to one million people in a war to end 130 years of French rule - want to escape to Europe?
 
Algeria is a rich nation but its people are poor. It is the world’s fourth largest gas exporter and the tenth of oil. Foreign currency reserves have soared to $138 billion at the end of Nov. 2008 from $41 billion at the end of 2004.
 
Yet, the UNDP’s human development index, which measures quality of life, puts Algeria in 104th place, behind countries such as Cape Verde and Belize.
 
High unemployment, estimated at 70 percent among people under 30 - though official statistics give far lower figures - is driving many Algerians to desperate measures.
 
Earlier this year, police in the town of Chlef fought angry youths who had burned shops and buildings in the latest in a series of protests against lack of housing and jobs and what critics call an unresponsive political elite.
 
Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika has led his North African Arab country out of a brutal civil war by combining military force with an amnesty for militants, but getting Algerians out of poverty appears to be proving more difficult.
 
He looks well placed to stay in office after his allies pushed through a law that allows him to seek a third term in office when his second term ends next year.
 
High oil prices over the past few years have helped the country of 33 million launch a $140 billion five-year national economic development plan and repay a large part of its foreign debt.
 
The Algerian government has promised a $100-150 billion national development drive from next year. But many Algerians ponder how to cope until such a plan takes off.
 
“We are desperate,” said Mohamed Tegar, a 32-year-old resident of Chelf. “We are six men living in a very small flat and all of us are unemployed. We don’t understand the local authorities’ reaction.”

Kenya’s power-sharing government was only born after weeks of election violence that killed 1,300 people. Zimbabwe’s power sharing agreement is yet to bear fruit as southern Africa’s former breadbasket crumbles into economic ruin.

So will power sharing in Central African Republic, where one of Africa’s most forgotten conflicts has been simmering for more than half a decade, fare any better?

After 10 days of United Nations-backed talks, President Francois Bozize, a former army chief who seized power in a 2003 coup, has agreed with rebel and opposition leaders, including the man he deposed, to form a consensus government to rule until the next scheduled presidential elections in 2010.

The stakes are high. Despite its mineral riches, which include diamonds and uranium, Central African Republic remains prostrated by poverty and languishes near the bottom of the U.N. human development index. The country and its people are scarred by fighting before, during and after the 2003 coup that included mass rapes — used as a weapon of war — torture and killings now being investigated by the International Criminal Court. Low-intensity northern insurgencies since then have driven tens of thousands of civilians into the bush as they flee rebel and bandit raids, and government army counter-attacks.

From Sudan in the east, gangs of poachers marauding over the border have decimated CAR’s historically rich wildlife of elephants and big game, which used to draw the world’s rich and famous on hunting trips. Some conservation groups have even turned to hiring South African mercenaries to try to curb the poachers. From the north and east, fierce Chadian and Sudanese fighters raid over the frontier, while feared highway bandits known locally as “zaraguinas” prey on travellers and villagers alike, even striking over the western border into Cameroon to rob and seize children for ransom from wealthy cattle-raising tribes.This year, Ugandan rebels of Joseph Kony’s notorious Lord’s Resistance Army have sacked villages in the remote southeast corner of CAR.

Against this backdrop of endemic violence, can Central African Republic’s power-sharing initiative deliver lasting peace? Can the former enemies, President Bozize and the rebel warlords, “bury the hatchet of war” and deliver the long-suffering nation and its people from “Satan and his demons”, as former President Ange-Felix Patasse put it?
 
What do you think?

There was jubilation, defiance and a sense of history in the making in this farming community this week when some 4,000 South Africans gathered to lay the groundwork for what may be a seismic shift in the political landscape.

It is too early to say whether the birth of the Congress of the People will be the political equivalent of an earthquake or a minor tremor. But there is no denying that the new political party caught the nation’s attention with the inaugural conference in Bloemfontein.

Delegates sang anti-apartheid anthems, danced and denounced the ruling African National Congress. Many had recently defected from the ANC, which has ruled since the end of apartheid in 1994. Some admitted they had fallen out of favour with the party after new leader Jacob Zuma took over a year ago.

The COPE faithful speak of a need to save the country from Zuma, who is the frontrunner to become the country’s next president after the general election in 2009. They believe he will reverse the gains made under Nelson Mandela and Thabo Mbeki, ousted as president by the ANC in September.

“We cannot allow a man like Zuma to take power. This would be a disaster for our country,” Joseph Mabunda, a COPE supporter from Bloemfontein said on Tuesday after the new party named its leadership team and outlined its programme for the 2009 election.

COPE’s leader is former defence minister Mosiuoa Lekota. Many South Africans refer to him as “Terror,” a nickname picked up on the soccer pitch decades ago. It is said he was an accomplished though aggressive player, and his supporters believe he can rekindle that magic against Zuma.

COPE supporters were buoyed by recent by-election victories - their candidates took slightly less than a third of the seats in contention. On Tuesday, delegates carried a mock ANC coffin outside the conference hall.

But the ANC is fighting back and remains very confident.
The ruling party, unlike its new rival, can count on a formidable political machine and healthy campaign coffers.

“You can hang that in a museum next year” says an ANC supporter, pointing at the COPE media credential badge hanging around my neck. “Nobody will beat us.”

What do you think of COPE’s chances?

As Ghanaians get set to elect a new president and parliament on Sunday, there seems to be as much attention on what a new leader will mean for Ghana as on what message Ghana will send the world about the state of Africa today. After a dismal year with elections rigged or marred by violence in Kenya, Zimbabwe and most recently Nigeria, to name but a few, Africa could do with a pick-me-up.

Despite some wobbles and sporadic violence in northern Ghana where several people were killed in the early stages of the campaign, preparations for Sunday’s elections have gone relatively smoothly.

Sure, there have been arguments over voter registration, and worries voter lists may not be perfect. But politicians, civil society groups and even local hip-life artist Obour have joined a campaign against violence and to ensure electoral disputes are dealt with by the courts.

Yet some people worry too much power has been concentrated in the presidency under the administration of John Kufuor, who is standing down after the maximum two terms in office, and fear the capacity of the courts to judge electoral complaints impartially may be compromised.

These will be the fifth national elections since the charismatic former coup-leader Jerry Rawlings introduced multiparty democracy in 1992. They follow Ghana’s celebrations last year of 50 years of independence and hosting this year of the African Cup of Nations soccer tournament.

A successful election, free from violence and in which all candidates accept the result, would be a further boost for Ghana as it hopes for more rapid economic growth once offshore oil fields start pumping in late 2010.
 
So what does it mean for Ghana? And what does it mean for Africa? Would good elections here make a difference to the rest of the continent? Tell us what you think.

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.

But no matter who is to blame, the situation looks dangerously as though it could get beyond anyone’s control.

Should the crisis force Tsvangirai to join Mugabe in the power-sharing government they had agreed to - even if he doesn’t get all the posts that he wanted? Should Mugabe give way to the opposition leader’s demands? Tsvangirai’s MDC said talks between the parties on the unity government would resume in two weeks. Is that soon enough? Does Zimbabwe have any choice but a deal between the two old rivals?

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?

There are precedents in West Africa. Former child soldiers in Liberia and Sierra Leone who spent their formative years living by the gun have been reschooled and retrained, some integrated into the national army, others starting lives with newly-learned skills as carpenters or welders.

Negotiators trying to build peace in divided countries such as Ivory Coast or Democratic Republic of Congo have brought former rebels into the fold by making them stakeholders in the future of their countries, with varying degrees of success.

Could the same philosophy of constructive engagement work with the armed youths of the Niger Delta?

Some of the young men waiting in Lagos airport to begin the overseas part of their "reorientation training" reminded me of former child soldiers I had met in Liberia and Sierra Leone, or young Tuareg rebels in northern Mali and Niger. They had similar aspirations as young adults anywhere -- to earn a decent living, be able to look after themselves and win respect from their peers.

"Anybody in violence wants out of violence, it's just a question of finding a way," one of them, Patrick, commented.

So could the programme work? If, with new skills, these former militants can return home and earn a living, could they persuade others in the community to lay down their weapons? Or is it an expensive waste of money, rewarding former criminals with the sort of opportunities that many in Nigeria can only dream of?

 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.

“By hauling the long-serving politicians to court, the Government has dispelled the rumour that some influential personalities are being shielded,” commented The Citizen newspaper of the charges against the former ministers.

Is Tanzania’s anti-graft drive now fully on course or will these two turn out to be scapegoats while others are ignored?

 

In Nigeria, the troubles of the former head of the anti-corruption agency are back in the headlines.

Nuhu Ribadu was sacked by President Umaru Yar’Adua’s administration despite winning favour from many Nigerians, foreign investors and western donors as head of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission. He had targeted some senior politicians and was widely credited with doing more than anyone had previously, although critics accused him of pursuing only those out of favour with former President Olusegun Obasanjo.

Ribadu’s position has been getting ever rockier since he was sacked and demoted. At the weekend, he and his family were bundled out of a graduation ceremony from the government institute where he was sent after being fired from his top post – although the presidency later intervened to say he would get his certificate after all and ordered an inquiry into the incident.

“The entire Ribadu family must by now be wondering, as are millions of other Nigerians, if it’s a curse to serve this country with all one’s heart and whether it’s a country worth dying for,” wrote Thisday’s Funke Aboyade after the ceremony.

Ribadu may now face a police disciplinary panel next month. Meanwhile, a top official of the anti-corruption agency has resigned after failing to report suspicious payments, another setback for the troubled body.

The very different examples bring up the issue of how politics complicates the fight against corruption - something in no way exclusive to Africa. Is it possible to fight corruption without truly independent and trustworthy police and courts? And if not, how is it possible to put those in place when leaders promise to stamp out graft but fail to live up to their words?

As one Nigerian leader remarked not so long ago: “This administration will mobilise all resources at its disposal to fight the menace of corruption.”

President Yar’Adua? His predecessor President Obasanjo? No. That was General Sani Abacha, who died in suspicious circumstances a decade ago with billions of dollars thought to be stashed in foreign bank accounts (If you still get emails from people purporting to be his relatives, it’s probably best not to reply).

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?

What should foreign donors do? Invest hundreds of millions of dollars to back security reforms to downsize and modernise the bloated army and struggling police and fund development programmes — even though aid workers say the government and state often appear barely functional and incapable of presenting or implementing programmes.

Or, at a time of global economic crisis when financial resources are stretched and Africa seems filled with conflicts, election disputes and refugees, (Congo, Darfur, Chad, Somalia, Zimbabwe), should the international community look for more deserving (or strategic) cases than little Guinea-Bissau?