Africa Archives - Foreign Policy In Focus

New Report Reveals Somalia’s Missing Millions

by Rasna Warah | Jul 31, 2012

The report shows that over the period 2000-2011, the first Somali Transitional National Government and the subsequent Transitional Federal Governments received bilateral aid totalling $308 million that was given mainly by Arab countries, including Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Libya, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. (This figure does not include funds that came through the Arab League. It also does not cover multilateral assistance to Somalia, which is managed entirely by the United Nations Development Programme.) Only $53 million was raised domestically during this period, mainly through the Mogadishu port and airport. However, successive governments have only been able to account for $124 million – or one-third – of the total bilateral and domestic funds they received.

Only Connect

by Heather Box | Jul 20, 2012

Kaganga John and I were huddled around my computer in the food court of the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, Rio+20. We were checking our emails to see if anyone had agreed to meet with us. I felt the brush of suit jackets as people rushed by us.

“We aren’t leaving this conference without a concrete step toward sustainable development for your village,” I told Kaganga, “even if that means we don’t sleep.”

Islamist Militias More Popular — or Less Unpopular — in Mali Than Native Tuaregs

by Paul Mutter | Jul 10, 2012

Though better armed, Tuareg fighters in Mali have been driven from the capital of their autonomous state of “Azawad.”

Caught Red Handed: Rwanda, Violence in Eastern Congo, and the UN Report

by Emily Norton | Jul 5, 2012

The atmosphere was tense during the DRC Briefing at IPS on June 29, 2012. The audience of 45 squeezed into the conference room to hear the updates on Rwanda’s most recent breach of Congolese sovereignty, and the Q & A session threatened to reach a fever pitch.

South Sudan’s Unhappy Anniversary

by Terah Edun | Jul 2, 2012

The status of the province of Abyei is an unresolved issue from the June 2011 détente between Sudan and South Sudan. In the year since South Sudan’s independence, the two countries have managed to avoid a full-scale war. But minor skirmishes on the border and illegitimate air raids on the Heglig oil field in April 2012, however, have disrupted that faulty peace.

Corporate Accountability In Liberia Gets A Fresh Look

by Emily Dickey, Miriam Hauser | Jun 30, 2012

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Liberia’s first woman president, has been praised internationally for her efforts to address war crimes from the country’s civil war and for negotiating significant debt relief, even winning the Noble Peace Prize as a result. However, a briefing held last Thursday by IPS’ Foreign Policy in Focus coinciding with Sirleaf’s recent visit to the United States drew attention to areas that Sirleaf has failed to adequately address. The event was well attended, with more people than could fit into our conference room.

Sudan on Verge of Bankruptcy — Militarily, Economically and Politically

by Paul Mutter | Jun 30, 2012

The Sudanese government turn protests into a sting operation by publicizing fake ones online and arresting those who show up.

Kenya: Postcolonial Imperial Hangover

by Nicholas Kariuki Githuku | Jun 29, 2012

I distinctly remember watching on television with concern how young men from the Coast province of Kenya were ambushed and rounded up by security forces who busted them in the midst of military training with homemade wooden rifles a few years ago. Given the ragtag nature of this wannabe “army,” my initial reaction was to dismiss them as a bunch of loonies. But a few months to roughly a year later, I again saw in the news this time a group of well-clad young men being frog-marched by police in the streets of Mombasa, the second biggest and oldest trading city in Kenya on the Indian Ocean that is also home to the country’s naval force. This group, it was later to emerge was the secessionist Mombasa Republican Council (MRC) that is no doubt one of the biggest headaches for Kenya’s political leadership, and to some extent a great concern to the international community of nations considering the geo-political significance of Mombasa, which is a remarkable commercial and military nerve centre. The MRC has dominated national news for the last few months as their secessionist demands have hit a new high octave. These young men, women and children are not a passing cloud that can be wished away and their existential frustrations and subsequent pain and distress motivating them to secede from Kenya after almost fifty years ought to be an issue of great concern to all.

Is the Threat of a “Mafia State” Real?

by Michael Busch | Jun 23, 2012

If international relations scholarship is to advance policymakers’ understanding of transnational organized crime and its role with respect to state power, new frameworks are needed.

The Pitfalls of Presidential Priestliness

by Peter Certo | Jun 14, 2012

One of the most resonant details from The New York Times’ recent feature on the Obama administration’s targeted killing program is the president’s apparent fondness for the writings of Thomas Aquinas and Augustine of Hippo, two early Christian thinkers who attempted to reconcile the pacifist teachings of Christ with the compromises that leaders must make in their inherently violent line of work. The president, it is suggested, strives to wage a “just war” against militants abroad, exacting only as much violence as is necessary to protect the United States from harm.