November 6

• Africa: The Remittance Industry Is Failing Those Who Need It Most [opinion]

  The remittance market in Africa has for too long been monopolised by companies imposing very high fees that are on average three times those charged on remittances to Asia. They... Read more »

• Kenya: Clashes Highlight Election Dangers [analysis]

  In Kenya, ahead of the 2013 elections, attention is turning to sources of tension that could fuel the kind of poll-related violence seen at the end of 2007 and in the first few... Read more »

• Africa: A Polemic Against NGOs and the Destruction of Local Innovation [analysis]

  The development sector has for the past few years been criticised for being ineffectual. This has come both from ex-insiders, such as Owen Barder and William Easterly, as well as... Read more »

November 2

• Somalia: The Kismayo Conundrum(s) [analysis]

  If insecurity was the thorniest problem that plagued Somalia's previous governments, the new one will be dogged by multiple political challenges. Chief among those is the status of... Read more »

• Africa: How to Bring Education to the Poor [opinion]

  In 2006 some friends of mine were given $5 million by Lisbet Rausing for education in Uganda. They set up an NGO called Mvule (named after a beautiful Ugandan tree), and asked me... Read more »

November 1

• Liberia: The Mammoth Task Facing President Sirleaf [analysis]

  Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, President of Liberia, combines a matriarchal exterior with a sophisticated economist's intelligence. First elected in to office in 2006, she has headed a... Read more »

October 31

• Ghana: Security Forces, Civil Society Weigh in on Mining Sector [analysis]

  Mining is probably Ghana's most established industry. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the as yet unformed country was the world's biggest producer of gold, constituting... Read more »

October 30

• Uganda: Battlelines Drawn Over Oil [analysis]

  When Beatrice Atim Anywar received a call from a reporter to ask if her daughter had applied for a scholarship with an oil company, she laughed: "I had no idea," she said. At over... Read more »

• Kenya: Kenya and the Obamas - a Half Sister and an Election [analysis]

  I was in Kenya at the time of Barack Obama's election to US President back in 2008. Actually, I was in Uganda on the night of his election - in a cheap Kampala hotel room with... Read more »

October 29

• South Africa: Rhino Poaching - Organised Crime and Economic Opportunity Driving Trade [analysis]

  As you enter the region of Hoedspruit in South Africa's Limpopo province - the gateway to the world famous Kruger National Park - you see big signs along the road warning that... Read more »

October 26

• Africa: Managing Risks in the Extractive Industries [analysis]

  Rising demand fuelled by emerging countries, most notoriously China and India, has led to increased competition for natural resources. Despite recurrent volatility in the markets,... Read more »

October 25

• Nigeria: Chinua Achebe Makes Peace With Nigeria [book review]

  Chinua Achebe's latest book, There was a Country, has appeared fifty-four years after the author's first novel, Things Fall Apart, today arguably the best-known novel ever written... Read more »

October 24

• Africa: Guinea-Bissau, Coups and Africa's Cocaine Equation [analysis]

  After an assault on an air force base in Guinea Bissau left six dead early Sunday, the tiny West African nation's civilian government issued a swift, damning verdict: That the... Read more »

• Ethiopia: A Tale of Two Development Models [analysis]

  The Rift Valley in Eastern Africa is our hole in the ground, where we all come from. Not far from here our earliest ancestors stopped hanging out in the trees and started to use... Read more »

• East Africa: Use of Khat Divides Opinions [analysis]

  This piece is part of the Africa and the War on Drugs debate - a series of articles and reviews commissioned to coincide with the launch of the latest book in the African Arguments... Read more »

• Tanzania: Tension Rises After Gas Finds [analysis]

  Things are changing in Tanzania. Large gas finds off the country's coastline look set to shake up a country generally considered in continental economic analysis as stable but... Read more »

October 23

• Mauritania: President's Shooting 'Reveals Military Regime Parading As a Democracy' [analysis]

  When the news spread that Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz of Mauritania had been shot my reaction was, "it finally happened!" Read more »

October 22

• Africa: Africa and the War On Drugs [analysis]

  Islamic terrorists with interests in the cocaine trade have taken over northern Mali. Fuelled by narco-dollars, they are threatening further mayhem. Perhaps these same people are... Read more »

October 19

• Sudan: Reviewing the 2012 Addis Ababa Peace Agreements (Part II) [analysis]

  Part one of this article examined the details of the security and border protocols agreed in the new Cooperation Agreement between Sudan and South Sudan.  To conclude this... Read more »

• Africa: Africa and the War On Drugs - Fighting a-Historical Analysis of the West African Trade [book review]

  In a recent New York Times article – 'US Drug War Expands to Africa, a Newer Hub for Cartels' – a high-level US drug official states: 'We see Africa as the new ... Read more »

• West Africa: Stopping West African Drug Trafficking [analysis]

  Everyone working on drugs in Africa should read Neil Carrier and Gernot Klantschnig’s short but insightful new book, Africa and the War on Drugs. Read more »

October 17

• Mali: Military Intervention Impossible, Until Now [analysis]

  Nobody seems to know what to do about Mali. In late September, the world's biggest tradeshow in global governance - the UN General Assembly - wound down having made no real... Read more »

October 16

• Africa: Should Mo Ibrahim Award Prizes to Countries, Not Leaders? [opinion]

  This year's launch of the Mo Ibrahim Index on Governance and the Mo Ibrahim Prize for leadership was full of signs and signals. Read more »

• Africa: Ozwald Boateng - Unlikely Champion of the African Development Bank [analysis]

  When the African Development Bank announced its decision to launch a $ 22 billion bond to its member states it found an unlikely supporter in Ghanaian born fashion designer, Ozwald... Read more »

• Africa: Novel Skewers Aid Agencies [book review]

  The aid world needs to look to its laurels if it is to avoid becoming the target of a new generation of novelists. Read more »