Patrick Smith
by
Patrick Smith in Nairobi
Questions
about Kenya's election results four days after voting and the crash
of electronic systems meant to provide safeguards against rigging are
raising the political temperature. Opinion is divided between those
who...
Patrick Smith
BAMAKO: Mali
and Libya were the only African states to surface in the three US
presidential debates between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney. In fact it
was Romney who raised the spectre of the jihadist takeover of
northern Mali, fresh from his la...
Gill Lusk
'Protests
over Sudan austerity measures' say the headlines. Yes, people are indeed protesting about the government removing subsidies on fuel and sugar, two of the commodities that Sudanese hold most dear. And they are protesting when the government tell...
Gill Lusk
Picture the scene. A score of motley officials, aid workers and
journalists are seated around a table at Britain's Overseas Development
Institute in London. At the head of the table sits Pa'gan Amum
Okiech, Secretary General of South
Sudan's governing pa...
Patrick Smith
Life for those accused and convicted of war crimes got marginally worse last week. Thomas Lubanga, militia leader and recruiter of child soldiers in Congo-Kinshasa, faces the prospect of two decades in a cell in the Hague.
Joseph Kony, the leader of Lord...
Patrick Smith
The elevation of dealmaker extraordinaire Katumba Mwanke to Congo-Kinshasa's Order of National Heroes, two days after he was killed in a plane crash in Bukavu on 12 February, prompts an unhappy comparison with the only other two recipients of the award: P...
Patrick Smith
The shootings and bombings in Nigeria's northern commercial capital of Kano on 20 January are reckoned to have taken over 170 lives. They followed the established pattern of attacks in northern Nigeria over the past month: a surprise attack on police stat...
Gill Lusk
Never has there been so much criticism of the Arab League by the international Arab media. Yet the League’s emergency meeting in Cairo on Sunday only boosted the numbers in its mission to monitor abuses in Syria, refusing to accept United Nations obse...
Patrick Smith
This week, popular opposition to political and commercial fraud in Congo-Kinshasa could precipitate a new national crisis following disputed national elections on 28 November (AC Vol 52 No 23). Increasingly credible claims of widespread vote rigging again...
Stars Foundation
Wangari Maathai was the first African woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. Born in the Central Highlands of Kenya in 1940, it was Maathai’s academic prowess that initially gained her recognition. During a period in which the majority of Kenyan girls ha...
