Blogs

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has concluded his four day visit to four African countries that took him to Egypt, Nigeria, Namibia, and Angola. This was his first official trip to the continent and the second in three years by a Russian president. While several energy, nuclear, and commercial agreements were signed, Russia sought to bolster its stragetic position on the continent vis-as-vis the new Asian powers of China and India and the old Atlantic powers of Western Europe and the United States. 

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When I read a text message this morning in Doha where I am currently visiting sent by my daughter in Atlanta that Michael Jackson had died I was aghast with shock. The soundtrack of a generation, including mine in far away Malawi where I grew up when Michael Jackson, the Motown child prodigy then teenage singing sensation who became a world mega superstar, has gone silent forever, although his music will of course live on. 

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All too often, the underlying ideas that frame public discourse and even policy remain unexamined. One of the most powerful of such ideas is the notion of civil society, which enjoyed particular prominence at the height of the new wave of democratization in the 1990s and early 2000s across much of the world including Africa. Civil society was generally seen as the repository of all that was positive and possible for Africa, which the heinous state had thwarted through its authoritarian inflexibilities, inefficiencies and instabilities.

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The African Competitiveness Report was released earlier this month preceding the official opening of the World Economic Forum on Africa held in Cape Town, June 10-12. Jointly produced by the African Development Bank, the World Bank, and the World Economic Forum, the report discusses the short- and long-term challenges facing African economies including the current global economic crisis, as well as the successes that have been registered in recent years and how they can be spread and deepened.

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The current crisis in Iran is, quite predictably, eliciting conflicting and often contradictory commentaries in the media and reactions from governments around the world. As is often the case with charged political events, the prevailing opinions and responses usually reflect existing ideological and political predispositions and tell us as much about what is going in Iran as what the protagonists would like to see happen.

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