Blue Lines
Those literary gannets and prize committees taken aback by the waves of brilliant African fiction and poetry landing on their desks should look at the raw material served up to writers every day on the continent. It takes nothing away from these writers’ ...
Blue Lines
Suddenly the political action has shifted to Africa's parliaments, as party alliances crack and legislators target the executive authority of presidents. The latest parliamentary fracas, in Nigeria, pitted the opposition All Progressives Congress (APC) ag...
Blue Lines
Last week's street protests in Burkina Faso, which toppled President Blaise Compaoré, recall the Tunisian demonstrations which launched the rebellions across north-east Africa four years ago. There are some clear parallels. Compaoré, like Tunisia's Presid...
Blue Lines
Africa has lost two strong independent voices in the past week: Efua Dorkenoo, the Ghanaian women’s rights activist, and Ali Mazrui, the Kenyan academic and author.
Dorkenoo left her home in Cape Coast and went to work as a nurse in London, where she saw...
Blue Lines
There is a strong sense of apocalypse as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund hold their annual meetings in Washington DC on 10-12 October. Part of that comes from the blunt warnings from Bank President Jim Yong Kim that the future of Africa may...
Blue Lines
Both sides of the corporate coin were on parade this week. Dozens of
bankers and chief executives attended the United Nations Climate Summit
in New York on 23 September, which was a prelude to negotiations in
Paris next year for a new climate treaty to re...
Blue Lines
If there are any positive side-effects from the Ebola outbreak that
has
already cost more than 2,300 lives in West Africa, it may be to
highlight the short-sightedness of funding cuts to international health
agencies. Margaret Chan, the
Director General o...
Blue Lines
Asked about the qualities needed by a journalist, the late, great Nicholas Tomalin replied: ‘Rat-like cunning, a plausible manner and a little literary ability.’ The same could be said of many anti-corruption lawyers, judges and officials, such as Spain’s...
Blue Lines
Amid the gridlock and diplomatic glad-handing as over 50 high-level African
delegations descended on a humid Washington for a week, it looked as if straight talking might lose out. Economics and business, it quickly emerged, was what had brought the deleg...
Blue Lines
Will the grand Africa-United States summit with more than 40 leaders in attendance in Washington D.C. on 4-6 August produce the results wanted by its protagonists? The expected high attendance is due both to President Barack Obama's charisma and the searc...
