Governance

The World Bank’s much trumpeted ‘alternative’ model of growth – the utilisation of low-cost, skilled labour in the developing world for the export of IT and IT-enabled services (IT-ITES) to the West – has found a receptive audience amongst certain African politicians and policymakers.

The story of 12 year-old John Sampson was so compelling I decided I would share it with a group of young Malawians I was meeting on 17 November. In case you haven’t heard his story, which made headlines around the world last week, let me briefly tell you who this young man is.

My father and mother died when I was very young. I do not remember. I went to live with my relatives in a village very far from town. And then one day, my relatives brought me to a village near a school. They could not look after me, so I was moved from one relative to another.

Tropical storm Sandy swept through from the Caribbean up the Eastern Seaboard of North America in the last week of October 2012. The date is itself important because by the end of October, it had been expected that the Hurricane season was over.

Not to understate the willingness of our government to shamelessly exploit 'the father of the nation', Madiba's image can now be found not on just one note, but on all five South African rand notes. We may have indeed forgotten that there are a few other struggle heroes worth acknowledging!

‘His re-election in 2012 has generated little celebration,’ writes Harvard Professor Calestous Juma in Forbes Magazine http://tinyurl.com/csefuoz .

For the last several months Rwandans, Congolese, Africans and the international community have watched as the predictable drama from Paul Kagame's regime plays out once again in the Kivu region of eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.

As it happened four years ago, the Israelis are again in Gaza, cutting down anything and everyone in their way.

The Israeli assault on Gaza continues. The death toll rises over 100, infrastructure is destroyed, and the UN relief agencies are at wit’s end. A desperate tone has entered the dispatches from the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), which has operated in occupied Palestine since 1950.

Besides terrorism threats, the federal government of Somalia faces other threats emanating from three different but self-reinforcing sources. These threats would derail the achievement of peace, stability and self governance in Somalia.