How bad can things get in Madagascar? Dissident soldiers said they had deployed tanks in the capital on Friday and the president urged the population to repel the mutineers.

In a worst case scenario, tanks in Antananarivo could lead to battles between the police and the presidential guard -- who remain loyal to President Marc Ravalomanana -- against mutinous troops and members of the military police.

The mutineers insist they have no plans to attack the presidential palace, that they are not taking orders from opposition leader Andry Rajoelina, and that they are only responding to public calls to restore law and order.

Rumours have been rife in the city all week that Ravalomanana might call in hundreds of mercenaries, perhaps from South Africa, to defend him now that parts of the armed forces no longer listen to him. The mutineers said they had deployed tanks specifically to "intercept" any private mercenary forces that tried to enter the capital.

If that happened, fighting could break out and civilians would almost certainly be caught in the crossfire. The U.S. Embassy is encouraging its diplomats and citizens to leave while they can.

If the public ignore the president's call to confront the dissident troops, and the mutineers stick to their pledge not to attack his palace and topple him at gunpoint, the stand-off is likely to continue. A crisis in 2002 over disputed election results rumbled on for eight months. The United Nations, African Union and others have been pushing for a resumption of face-to-face talks between the two men, but as the crisis deepens that prospect is receding.

Meanwhile, The crisis has already hammered Madagascar's previously booming $390 million-a-year tourism sector. Tour operators say a stand-off will lead to the entire year being a write-off, and any escalation of the violence could hit visitor arrivals for years to come.

Major foreign investors, which include Total, Rio Tinto and Sherritt International, have so far not been affected, since their operations are well outside the capital. But civil war or a protracted stalemate, would be sure to make them re-evaluate their investment plans.

Sudan’s President Omar Hassan al-Bashir has seen off other challenges in almost 20 years in power and there is no sign that he is going to give in to the arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Darfur.

Some supporters of the court's move hope it will eventually persuade Sudan's politicians to hand over their leader in a palace coup, end the festering conflict in Darfur and do more to repair relations with the West.

But many signs point in the other direction, turning Bashir further towards allies such as Russia and China as he strengthens his hold on power.

Some believe the court’s decision could worsen the fighting in Darfur because rebel movements will be emboldened and because Khartoum will feel that there is no longer any point in trying to pander to the West.

There are also concerns over what it could mean for the 2005 peace deal that ended the two-decade north-south war - although officials from the semi-autonomous south have been quick to say, in public at least, that they are standing behind Bashir.

While Bashir remains in power, the arrest warrant means the West has lost one of its strongest negotiating cards with Sudan -- the offer to normalise relations.

The new U.S. administration could still offer Sudan the carrot of removing the country from its list of state sponsors of terrorism. But early statements from President Barack Obama and his team suggest they plan a tougher stance on Sudan.

Some of the 30 African countries who signed the founding statute of the International Criminal Court may start reconsidering their involvement. Many states already feel the court's investigations to date have unfairly targeted the continent.

And there is no sign that Bashir will be arrested. Despite the call from the ICC for all countries to implement the warrant, he plans to go to an upcoming Arab summit in Qatar and intends to join future African summits. While Qatar has not signed up to the statute, if Bashir were to get away with visiting a country that has done so it might seriously challenge the court’s authority.

Was it right for the court to issue the warrant against Bashir? Will it improve the situation in Sudan or make it worse? Could it end up undermining the court? What do you think?

Earlier this month, Zambian economist Dambisa Moyo argued that Africa needs Western countries to cut long term aid that has brought dependency, distorted economies and fuelled bureaucracy and corruption. The comments on the blog posting suggested that many readers agreed. In a response, Savio Carvalho, Uganda country director for aid agency Oxfam GB, says that aid can help the continent escape poverty - if done in the right way:

In early January, I travelled to war-ravaged northern Uganda to a dusty village in Pobura and Kal parish in Kitgum District. We were there to see the completion of a 16km dirt road constructed by the community with support from Oxfam under an EU-funded programme.

The road is bringing benefits in the form of access to markets, education and health care. Some parents say their daughters feel safer walking to school on the road instead of through the bushes. Many families have used the wages earned from construction work to pay for school fees and medical treatment. This is the impact of aid.

Having lived and worked in east Africa, I have witnessed the positive effects of aid. But done badly, it can be very limiting and even has the potential to create more harm. To avoid this, it must be provided within an enabling environment in which it is used as a catalyst for change and not as an end in itself. Governments must show leadership through an accountable system.

For individuals, access to resources – including aid - is like an investment. Aid can build up poor people’s assets, support good governance and enhance skills and capacities to bring about transformation. But it can become a bane when it makes communities dependent, lazy and hopeless. Governments, aid agencies and the United Nations need to ensure the delivery of aid is well planned and coordinated, leading to higher self-reliance among poor communities.

Aid is also beneficial when trade is fair. There are several examples in Africa, like the case of coffee farmers in Uganda, where aid has been used effectively to improve the overall quality of the coffee seeds, thereby giving farmers better prices for their produce. When they have access to markets at home and abroad, they generate income which is ploughed back into increased output, better access to health and education, and overall improvement in the quality of their lives. To make this happen, developed countries need to stop procrastinating and put in place fair trade practices.

Aid works well if governments are accountable – in other words, when they are responsible and encourage active citizenship. On this continent, civil society is still weak and needs to be nourished. But stopping aid will not resolve frustrations about poor governance, which is partly a result of weak public scrutiny. Aid should be used to help fight corruption and promote accountability through active input from ordinary people.

As I have argued here, receiving aid is not just an act of charity. It should be understood as the right of poor communities to a life of dignity. As stated in international conventions, people have a right to good health, food, water and education. We all need to ensure the planet’s resources are equitably distributed. As Mahatma Gandhi said, you must be the change you want to see in the world.

So what do you think? Which argument is most convincing?

If anyone in Africa was worried that the global financial crisis might dim China’s interest in the continent, President Hu Jintao will be visiting this week to give some reassurances - as well as possibly to temper any unrealistic hopes for the amount of assistance to be expected.

As Chris Buckley reported from Beijing, this visit is also about China showing the wider world that it is a responsible power.

The fact that none of the countries Hu will visit is among Africa’s economic or resource heavyweights - Mali, Senegal, Tanzania and Mauritius - is seen as a sign that China wants to send a message that its engagement with Africa is about much more than resources.

Trade between China and Africa rose to $107 billion last year and more deals are expected on this visit. Nearly all of Africa's exports to China still come from a handful of countries rich in oil or minerals, though, and now the global downturn has put those in more doubt.

China’s involvement in Africa is a subject we looked at recently. Alistair Thomson in Dakar found that even if some Chinese investments in Africa were losing their lustre, many Chinese firms were taking a longer-term view to pursue strategic expansion - and some were hunting for bargains. For China, Africa also offers an important destination for exports, as any visit to even the most remote African marketplace will quickly show.

Growing trade relations with China were one of the things seen by Zambian economist Dambisa Moyo in a previous blog post as a way for Africa to emerge better off from the financial crisis and less dependent on Western aid.

But China’s involvement in Africa has brought concern from some in the West - quite apart from those who may stand to lose out on the business front - with some critics saying Beijing’s interest is too focused on the drive to secure resources and pays little heed to the kind of thing that Western donors say they want to promote, such as elections, human rights and the fight against corruption.

Will Africa be able to depend on China in the long term? How healthy is that going to be? What do you think?

Pictures: Money changer Kwami Longange poses for a portrait on a streetcorner in Goma in eastern Congo, February 9, 2009. REUTERS/Finbarr O'Reilly

China's President Hu Jintao delivers a speech in Beijing December 31, 2008. REUTERS/Jason Lee

Far from being all bad news for Africa, the global financial crisis is a chance to break a dependence on development aid that has kept it in poverty, argues Zambian economist Dambisa Moyo, who has just published a new book “Dead Aid”.

Moyo’s book, her first, comes out at a time when Western campaigners, financial institutions and some African governments have been warning of the danger posed to Africa by the crisis and calling for more money from developed countries as a result. The former World Bank and Goldman Sachs economist spoke to Reuters in London.

“I’m not saying its going to be easy, I’m just saying that there is a real opportunity for policymakers to focus on coming up with more innovative ways of financing economic development. In a way the crisis actually provides the African governments with the situation where they cannot rely on aid budgets coming through from the West.”

Moyo believes more than $1 trillion in development aid over the past 50 years has only entrenched Africa’s poverty, distorted economies and fuelled bureaucracy and corruption. She sees alternatives such as encouraging trade - particularly with emerging markets - encouraging foreign direct investment, microfinancing for enterprise and seeking funds from capital markets.

Moyo is not discouraged by the fact that all those options appear more difficult in the current environment.

“It just means the onus is on African governments to come up with a more compelling story as to why African governments are overseeing real asset investment not derivative products we don’t really understand.”

“If you focus on traditional markets like Europe and the United States, you come to the conclusion that markets are really damaged and it’s very hard to raise money in those markets, but if you start to look towards China for example which has $4 trillion of reserves, all of a sudden you could see there might be another opportunity to do a bond issue in the Chinese market for example.”

“The model that’s coming up, that I’m proposing, is essentially one where Africa and Africans become equal partners with the rest of the world, not one where there is kind of a donor and a recipient, where Africans are kind of viewed as secondary citizens,” she said.

“There is no other system, whether a political system or a business system, that has stayed as the status quo for 60 years when we all know it’s not doing what it’s supposed to do, it’s not generating growth and it’s not alleviating poverty.”

Moyo is not worried about the impact of aid being taken away:

“It actually tends to pool at the top so it’s not like the average African is going to suffer. They don’t see the aid anyway. Essentially it‘s going to really affect the bureaucratic processes at the top and would really impact on corruption.”

“You could take me to country X in Africa and say ‘look at this girl here and she’s going to school because of aid’. Yes, that’s true but on a macro aggregate perspective these economies are not growing. They’re not growing fast enough to ensure that when that girl is done with her schooling she can find a job.”

Moyo is unimpressed by Western campaigners such as rock stars Bob Geldof and Bono calling for lots more aid for Africa.

“I fundamentally object to the notion that Africa needs more aid and I do think it’s time to have many more Africans speak out, especially the policymakers, because many of the policymakers actually don’t support aid  and yet they stay in the background and they allow this money to come into the economy.”

“You very rarely see Africans on the global stage saying ‘actually we would like to have much more aid please’.”

“I do think a gap has opened up to allow other people to formulate a view on coming to the global debate and offering opinions as to what they think Africans want. But maybe we should start a website called ‘Ask the African’ because I think you might be quite surprised to find that people say ‘we want jobs’, I wouldn’t mind a flat screen television, I wouldn’t mind having my kids go on holiday sometimes ...’”

Picture: Helen Jones photography

Libya's often controversial leader, Muammar Gaddafi, has finally won the top seat at the African Union and promised to accelerate his drive for a United States of Africa, but it seems doubtful that even his presence in the rotating chairmanship will do anything to overcome the reluctance of many African nations to accelerate moves towards a federal government.

Gaddafi, a showman whose fiery, often rambling speeches, sometimes unconventional behaviour and colourful robes are always a scene stealer at international gatherings, has been pushing for a pan-regional govenrment for years. But like his previous, three-decade drive to to promote Arab unity, it has not aroused much enthusiasm in many quarters. All the AU's 53 states have said they agree in principle but estimates for how long this will take vary from nine years to 35.

Gaddafi was installed as chairman on Monday, the first time he has headed the AU or its discredited predecessor, the Organisation of African Unity although his aides say he has rejected the role twice before, preferring to work as a backroom reformer. He vowed in his inaugural speech to push forward with his pet project and said if there was not a majority opposed at the next summit in July, this would mean the idea was approved - somewhat discordant with the AU's traditional way of making decisions by consensus. AU leaders were berated by Gaddafi at a three-day summit in Ghana in 2007 for not agreeing to immediate union but braved his scorn and did not reach a deal. Regional economic power South Africa, with its considerable clout, leads the group of reluctant nations.

Delegates in Addis Ababa said privately that they felt duty bound to discuss the idea on the first day of this summit on Monday because Gaddafi is now an older statesman of the organisation and has poured money into some parts of the continent. But if anything, this meeting slowed down the process further. It agreed to change the AU Commission into a vague authority whose additional powers are not clear, and even that won't be launched until the next summit. Outgoing AU chairman Jakaya Kikwete, the Tanzanian president, said on the one hand that the authority would have more power but on the other that member states are not willing to give up their sovereignty.

There are also those within the AU who are uneasy about Gaddafi's prominence, given his previous alleged bankrolling of terrorism, for which he was ostracised by the West up until 2003. Then he was brought in from the cold after taking responsibility for the 1988 Lockerbie bombing that killed 270 people and abandoning the search for weapons of mass destruction. Human rights groups also accuse his security forces of arbitrary arrest of political opponents and torture.

But whatever your views of Gaddafi, he remains a consummate showman. For years his caravan of hundreds of bodyguards, including a special all-woman unit, and his insistence on sleeping in a tent at AU summits --often in the grounds of luxury hotels--caused pandemonium among press photographers and cameramen.

At the AU summit this year, he flew a group of around 30 customary African leaders to Addis and managed, despite the objections of security men, to bring seven them into the conference hall for his inauguration as chairman. Their gorgeous robes and royal regalia rivalled Gaddafi's own typically eye-catching golden robes and cap. One of the group, a "king' from Benin, hailed the Libyan leader as a "King of Kings", generating one of the most used photographs of the summit.

Is Gaddafi good for Africa or should other leaders ignore him? What do you think?

Zimbabwe's opposition Movement for Democratic Change has agreed to join a unity government with President Robert Mugabe, breaking a crippling deadlock four months after the political rivals reached a power-sharing deal.

The decision could improve Zimbabwe's prospects of recovering from economic collapse and easing a humanitarian crisis in which more than 60,000 people have been infected by cholera and more than half the population needs food aid.

Zimbabweans have long wished for a new leadership that can ease the world's highest inflation rate and severe food, fuel and foreign currency shortages. Millions have fled the suffering to neighbouring countries, straining regional economies.

Western aid and financial assistance tied to the creation of a democratic government and economic reform could be crucial to rescuing what was once one of Africa's most promising countries.

South Africa's President Kgalema Motlanthe was optimistic and told Reuters in Davos that his country would help rebuild Zimbabwe.

But Senegal's President Abdoulaye Wade and Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga cast doubt on whether the deal would work and said President Mugabe must go.

Will this decision work? Will it bring change and help ease the suffering of ordinary Zimbabweans? What do you think?

Southern African leaders have decided at a summit that Zimbabwe should form a unity government next month but the opposition said it was disappointed with the outcome, raising doubts over chances for ending the crisis.

The 15-nation SADC grouping said after the meeting in South Africa - its fifth attempt to secure a deal on forming a unity government - it had agreed that opposition MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai should be sworn in as prime minister by Feb. 11.

All parties agreed control of the hotly disputed Home Affairs Ministry, which has been a major obstacle to a final agreement, should be divided between President Robert Mugabe’s ZANU-PF party and Tsvangirai’s MDC for six months, said South African President Kgalema Motlanthe.

But the MDC quickly issued a statement after the SADC communique was read out, making clear its disappointment and raising the possibility that deadlock would drag on as Zimbabweans face growing economic hardship. The MDC said its national council would meet this weekend to define its position on the summit.

SADC said ministers would be sworn in on Feb. 13, which would “conclude the process of the formation of the inclusive government”. Allocation of ministries would be reviewed six months after the inauguration of the government, it added.

Mugabe, in power since 1980, and his ZANU-PF party have urged the opposition to join a unity government but say they will not hesitate to form one without them.

As the dispute drags on, prices are doubling every day. Food and fuel are in short supply and the local currency has been rendered virtually worthless. The death toll from a cholera epidemic has neared 2,900.

Should Tsvangirai now do as the southern African leaders say even if he has not got what he wanted? Should Mugabe go it alone to form a government if the opposition does not join now? What do you think?

“Sub-Saharan Africa: Year of Regression”. That was the heading used by U.S.-based rights group Freedom House in its survey of political freedom in the world published this week.

Of course the Freedom House survey pointed to the coups in Guinea and Mauritania as well as the situation in Zimbabwe, whose elections were condemned by many countries and where the crisis shows no sign of lessening, but there were plenty of other names on the list too:

Senegal - long held up as an example of democracy in Africa - dropped from "free to partly free" because of “a growing authoritarian trend”.

Nigeria suffered a drop “because of the ruling party’s increasing consolidation of power and marginalization of the opposition”.

Measuring freedom might sound like an abstract concept, but investors have cited improvements in governance and democracy, among other reasons, for increased interest in Africa as a whole in recent years. Countries that do better on those scores may find it helps to increase prosperity too.

Twelve of the 48 countries in the survey fell according to the group’s indicators. On the other hand, the report pointed to what it saw as positive developments in Angola, Ivory Coast, Zambia and Comoros.

"Sub-Saharan Africa has seen notable increases in freedom over the past generation, making these recent setbacks all the more disheartening," said Arch Puddington, Freedom House director of research.

Is it fair to say freedom is on the decline in Africa? Ghana’s election seemed to get 2009 off to a better start that some of last year’s elections on the continent. Is there reason to think that this year may be better overall?

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)