‘Behind the smoke, rubble and unending drama of human tragedy in the hapless Caribbean country, a drama is in full play for control of what geophysicists believe may be one of the world’s richest zones for hydrocarbons-oil and gas outside the Middle East,’ writes F. William Engdahl. Engdahl adds ‘oil’ to Haiti’s story, highlighting the increasing evidence that behind the rescue mission in Haiti, there perhaps lies a stark ulterior, but familiar, motive.

Michael Schmidt reveals the alarming extent of American military expansion in Africa. This article was written four years ago, but still holds strong relevance today in the context of United States Africa Command (AFRICOM). Schmidt describes three avenues that the US is taking to increase its military foothold in Africa in pursuit of its ‘War on Terror’: ‘piggybacking’ off already strong French military presence, creating an unofficial ‘School of the Africas’ in the guise of the African Centre for Strategic Studies, and with its Africa Contingency Operations Training Assistance (ACOTA) programme ‘aimed at integrating African armed forces into US strategic (imperialist) objectives’. Schmidt places blame beyond the US, however, and uncovers the role that African countries, particularly South Africa, are playing in strengthening US military presence through ‘secret pacts’. In light of all this, Schmidt concludes with a warning: ‘It would be naïve to think that bourgeois democracy… will protect the working class, peasantry and poor from state terrorism.’

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Zimbabwe Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai is pressing the world to end sanctions on his country as it climbs out of a political and economic abyss but wherever he goes the shadow of Robert Mugabe follows.

Jason Hickel asks whether ‘environmental determinism’ – the theory that Africa’s development has been hindered as a result of ‘the environmental conditions that Africans inhabit’ – accurately explains Africa’s poverty. While he commends its attempt to stop blaming underdevelopment 'on the presumed genetic inferiority of black people’, he finds the theory and motives behind environmental determinism to be seriously lacking. Hickel asserts that environmental determinism is both ahistorical and apolitical: ‘Poverty is not a problem of nature, it is a problem of power.’ Furthermore, he argues that to tackle the real issues behind Africa’s slow development and poverty would mean to go against Western economic interests and to radically change the world system in which we exist. ‘The wealth of the West’, Hickel reminds us, ‘is intimately bound up with the poverty of Africa, and vice versa.’

In this week's review of the African blogosphere, reports of a foiled coup plot in Burundi raise the spectre of instability and Cameroonians are seemingly overwhelmed by an influx of Chinese goods. There's also a response to Rajoelina's recent accusations of international interference, and 'sovereignty expenditures' by African states come under the spotlight.

Marion Grammer acknowledges the significant contribution made to the liberation struggle by the teachers, writers and intellectuals behind the Non-European Unity Movement (NEUM), the first organisation in South Africa to adopt the principle of non-racialism, which debunked the myths about African ‘inferiority’ and administered ‘an antidote to the poisonous indoctrination of apartheid. It was ‘the politics of anti-imperialism and non-racialism learned from the Unity Movement’, says Grammer, that ‘provided the impetus that sent young people marching and protesting and fighting for democracy in the 1970s and 80s’.

In the wake of the Ethiopian government's objections to the conclusions of the

In the wake of the Haitian earthquake, ANC Youth League Deputy President Andile Lungisa calls for the disaster to be seen within its broader historical context. Discussing Haiti's history as a nation long oppressed by external interests, Lungisa underlines the country's new vulnerability to forces concerned solely for profit in the aftermath of its tragedy.

Colette Braeckman

Venance Konan

Mixed reactions have marred Liberia following the recent announcement by President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf that she will run for re-election in 2011. Ms Sirleaf has said that she had not realised before the 2005 polls how much rebuilding work needed to be done in Liberia. She became Africa's first elected female head of state after winning 53 percent of the vote.

South Sudan's former rebels have chosen a northern Muslim as their candidate in April's presidential election, the country's first multiparty poll since 1986. The candidacy of Yassir Arman was announced by the Sudan People's Liberation Movement, which leads the government in the semi-autonomous south, on Friday after lengthy talks among party officials.

The lack of a coherent and committed international approach to tackling the role of natural resources in conflict is costing lives in Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and heightening the risk of further unrest in other fragile states such as Côte d'Ivoire and Guinea, according to a new report from Global Witness.

The East African Community (EAC) is set to boost business ties with the United States in a new trade platform that is to be launched in February. Operating under the Trade and Investment Framework Agreement (Tifa), the arrangement will help EAC member countries to utilise existing trade opportunities such as the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA).

A new telecoms tax epidemic is sweeping across Africa adding to the already high tax levels imposed on operators on the continent. This time the tax is being levied on inbound international calls and will increase their costs by between 20-100%. This will make the cost of doing business with Africa rise significantly in a time of global economic downturn.

The Security Council on Thursday sought to nudge Ivory Coast into holding much-delayed elections soon by extending the mandate of U.N. peacekeepers there by four months instead of the usual six. The West African nation that is the world's top cocoa producer has missed a series of deadlines for a presidential poll originally due in 2005 to resolve divisions that fueled a 2002-03 civil war that split the country in two.

African countries must develop clear infrastructure improvement plans to tap soft finance available for investment in the transport and energy sectors, an African Union official said on Friday.

Nancy Alexander's new report finds several worrying trends in how the World Bank spends its money, namely that it is increasing its lending to middle income countries while loans and grants to low income countries stagnate, that DPOs with less stringent safeguards are outpacing project lending, and that the Gender Action Plan is not achieving its goals.

Integrated, comprehensive and inclusive armed violence reduction (AVR) programmes are an emerging and growing area of development practice around the world. This paper, published by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, discusses the components of a multi-level AVR approach.

Violations of civil and political rights by Sudanese security forces throughout the country are seriously undermining prospects for free, fair, and credible elections in April 2010, Human Rights Watch has said.