Governance

INTRODUCTION

Several African countries are amongst today’s fastest growing economies in the world, boosted in many instances by new discoveries of oil, natural gas and strategic mineral reserves.

Here we go again! The other time, it was our friend and information minister, Labaran Maku who dropped the bombshell.

There has been a good deal of understandable outrage at the decision by the Obama administration to invite to Washington Nafie Ali Nafie, senior advisor to President Omar al-Bashir of the Khartoum regime.

Georges Clemenceau, the former Prime Minister and wartime leader of France once said: ‘When you want to bury a problem, appoint a committee to investigate it.’ That seems to me the regular pattern of the Jonathan administration. It has assumed an amusing and almost ridiculous dimension.

This latest provocation against Shakur, 65, is directed not only against the veteran Black Panther Party (BPP) and Black Liberation Army (BLA) member, but represents an overhaul attack on the struggle of African Americans against racism and national oppression in the United States.

Dear Mr. President,

To hear our black political class tell it, the election of the first black US president was its ultimate achievement to date, a giant step toward fulfilment of a previous generation's insurgent agenda for social transformation. Is that real?

Why did the bombers target the finish line? Was it racial based, as historically Africans have been winners? Three spectators died and later a campus police officer was executed: none of them were African despite the positioning.

The cultural foundation of the Federal Republic of Germany, the Kulturstiftung des Bundes, decided to initiate a new thematic focus in its sponsorship work. The programme is called TURN and – as explained in the introductory statement – it is supposed to deal with ‘Africa’.