Botswana: Community Wins Right to Ancestral Land

A community of Basarwa or San people of the Kalahari Desert in Botswana today won the right to live and hunt on their ancestral land. Read more »

Africa: 'Blood Diamond' Entertains, Educates

In the early days of Master Sergeant Samuel Doe's 1980 coup in Liberia, I was entering a hotel in Monrovia with my five-year-old son when soldiers lounging in the lobby started… Read more »

Guinea: Country Finds Hope in Alumina Refinery

In the dry season, a pervasive red dust wafts from the crushers at the bauxite operations that have dominated economic activity for over three decades in Guinea – home to a… Read more »

Angola: A New Diamond War

The upcoming Hollywood feature movie "Blood Diamond," starring Leonardo DiCaprio, promises to cast a spotlight on the role of so-called conflict diamonds in fueling… Read more »

Guinea: Local Residents Place High Hopes on Guinea's New Aluminum Refinery

For many citizens of Kamsar and Sangaredi, two cities about two hundred miles north of the capital Conakry in the West African nation of Guinea, bauxite mining has always been the… Read more »

South Africa: De Beers Workers Rush for HIV Testing, Treatment

Global diamond giant De Beers, which is 45 percent owned by Anglo American Plc, was honored Wednesday night for its workplace programs on HIV/Aids. Jonathan Oppenheimer, De Beers's… Read more »

Guinea: Global Alumina Agrees with UNDP to Advance Millennium Goals in Guinea

In the first agreement of its kind in the Republic of Guinea, a public/private partnership pact has been signed between the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and Global… Read more »

Zambia: Zambia Is a Peaceful Destination for Tourism and Investment - Mwanawasa

Levy Mwanawasa, who took part in last week's U.S.-Africa Business Summit, became president of Zambia in January 2002 after a hotly contested election the previous month in which he… Read more »

Africa: Mandela's Powerful Message - 'Africa's Time Has Come'

As people begin to line up in movie theaters to visit galaxies far, far away in the final chapter of Star Wars, Nelson Mandela comes to America to remind us of a continent right… Read more »

Angola: Book Outlines Trees, Misses the Forest

Angola: Anatomy of an Oil State. Tony Hodges. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004. 236 pp. $22.95. Read more »

Congo-Kinshasa: Scramble for Resources in DRC Leads to Massive Deaths, But Scant Attention

With an estimated 3.5 million Congolese dead over the last six years due to war, starvation and disease, the eastern region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo is one of the… Read more »

West Africa: Debate Over al Qaeda's Connection to West Africa's Diamond Trade Takes New Turns

The arrest of a Tanzanian fugitive in Pakistan last week, release of the 9-11 Commission report in Washington and a forthcoming finding by a war crimes tribunal in Sierra Leone… Read more »

Africa: Talks Aimed At Stopping 'Blood Diamonds' Flow Underway

A three-day meeting of some 70 nations in Johannesburg, South Africa to discuss implementation of a plan to eradicate the trade in "blood" or "conflict" diamonds winds up… Read more »

Congo-Kinshasa: Accusations 'Ridiculous' Says Rwanda's US Envoy

Charges made last week by Vital Kamerhe, the Democratic Republic of Congo's commissioner-general in charge of negotiations in the Great Lakes region, that a Rwandan-created "new… Read more »

Africa: 'Blood Diamonds' Talks Underway

As the World Diamond Council (WDC) began meeting in London, Monday, to finalize their plans for stamping out the flow of 'conflict' or 'blood' diamonds mined in African war zones,… Read more »

East Africa: Controversy Continues to Dog Major World Bank Projects

"Everybody is talking about development effectiveness, but the question is, how do you measure it? ...So what we are trying to do now is to pull together a meeting in June at which… Read more »