cc While Uganda's President Yoweri Museveni remains keen to stress his National Resistance Movement (NRM) party's increasing popularity in the country's north, Vincent Nuwagaba decries the deliberate fusing of party and state activities. With the NRM able to command all the financial resources the state's coffers will allow, Nuwagaba laments the discrimination directed at Ugandans supporting opposition parties and stresses the need for the country to become a genuine meritocracy.

cc 'It is a practical impossibility to have in place in Kenya a good constitution with the current breed of leaders, because most of them are tainted with corruption and do not have any value for human lives'' Kenyans Eyes From The Diaspora Group has said in an open letter to the Kenyan prime minister and president. The group says that the reason reforms of the country's constitution have taken so long to implement is because those in power fear that amendments would jeopardise their political careers. The letter, which also includes extracts from a draft constitution developed by the group, pleads with the African Union to put in place peacekeeping forces well in advance of Kenyas's 2012 elections.

cc US president Barack Obama might seem more human than his predecessor George W. Bush, cautions Nawal El Saadawi, but in a world ruled by a capitalist patriarchal religious system, politics is 'a game based on how to use beautiful words to cover ugly actions' and has 'nothing to do with humanity'. The real goal of Obama's Cairo speech, says El Saadawi, is 'to mobilise Muslim countries against Islamic extremists', 'to open the markets of Islamic countries to American goods' under the banner of development and partnership, and 'to guarantee Saudi and Gulf oil and other American interests' in the Middle East.

cc President Obama’s speech to the Muslim world delivered on 4 June was ‘powerful’ and ‘smart’, but PT Zeleza finds himself most interested in its ‘equivalences and silences’. With reference to media reactions and commentary from different parts of the world, Zeleza looks at Obama’s framing of the relationship between the US and Islam, the parallels Obama draws between the civil rights movement in the United States and Palestinian resistance, and Obama’s failure to ‘fully address one of the fundamental reasons for the estrangement of the so-called Muslim world from the United States: The latter's support for authoritarian regimes’. The United States ‘would do itself a lot of good if it curtailed its propensities for destructive interventions around the world’, says Zeleza, while ‘the so-called Muslim world’ would benefit from building ‘truly democratic developmental states’.

Despite promises from former World Bank President James Wolfensohn back in 1996 to take vigorous action to combat bribery, a new book by bank insider Steve Berkman suggests that nothing has changed, writes Peter Bossard. Citing case studies from Nigeria and Gambia, Bossard says Berkman's 'combines number crunching with vivid detail and moral outrage'. Berkman concludes that not one of the more than 100 projects he worked on 'did not reek of corruption', says Bossard, estimating that depending on the country, 15-40 per cent of the World Bank’s disbursements for any given project are lost to corruption. But Berkman 'does not give up all hope', arguing that the World Bank 'needs to spend less and supervise more' and proposing that 'the bank fully disclose all anti-corruption investigations, government agencies involved and funds stolen in its annual report'.

cc An understanding of US interests is crucial for Ghana if it is to capitalise on the immense opportunity provided by the President Obama's July visit, writes Asare Otchere-Darko. Following a deepwater oil find in 2007, Ghana's pending oil-rich status has made it the subject of strategic US energy and military interests, and raising the stakes of Ghana–US relations, Otchere-Darko argues. As the US's preferred physical location for the US African Command (AFRICOM) headquarters and with the superpower concerned not to cede strategic ground to China in the region, Ghana has an unprecedented hand to play in this round of international diplomacy. The task of Ghanaians, says Otchere-Darko, is to ensure that Ghana comes away with concrete deliverables that help meet its own strategic goals, rather than simply being the honoured recipients of President Obama's first visit to Africa.

Born 3,600 million years ago,
I am the oldest and most stable land mass on earth.
I am so large that the mightiest nation on earth
could fit into a desert of mine.
My oldest rocks bequeath such wealth,
I am well-endowed.
Too well-endowed for my own good.
My geology deposited an abundance of riches within my borders,
Beyond imagining.
Gold, diamonds copper, coltan, tin. I can’t remember them all.
I am too old.

With this year's now announced, Mildred Kiconco Barya interviews Henrietta Rose-Innes, the 2008 winner of the prize. The winner of the 2009 prize will be announced at the Bodleian Library, Oxford, on Monday 6 July.

cc With the Obama administration set to oversee significant increases in US security assistance programmes for African countries, Daniel Volman examines the US government's plans for its military operations on the African continent over the coming financial year. Stressing that the US president is essentially continuing the policies outlined under his predecessor George W. Bush, the author considers the proposed funding increases for initiatives like the Foreign Military Financing programme and the International Military Education and Training (IMET) programme. Pointing out that the administration is yet to offer any public explanation of its policy, Volman concludes that it would be a mistake to assume that there will be no US military action if the situation in Somalia deteriorates.

The and his family’s stranglehold on the country, one Malawian’s sense of national pride, the ponzi schemes are among the topics Dibussi Tande covers in his latest round-up of the African blogosphere.

AU Monitor

“The crisis in Côte d’Ivoire is deeper than elections,” according to Patrick N’Gouan, national coordinator of a civil society coalition. “Too many people do not eat their fill, cannot educate their children and cannot access health care. All the social and economic indicators have plummeted… We cannot solve all of Côte d’Ivoire’s problems with just politics – and yet this has been the focus of everyone’s energy and resources for the past few years. Meanwhile the people have been sacrificed,” N’Gouan told IRIN on 2 June.

South Africa was prepared to set up trade barriers with Botswana, Lesotho Mozambique and Swaziland to stop a flood of cheap imports entering the country. Trade and Industry Minister Rob Davies sounded the warning after SA’s neighbours broke ranks and signed trade deals in the form of an interim economic partnership agreement (EPA) with the European Union (EU).

Madagascar's former leader Marc Ravalomanana rejected on Friday the jail sentence against him for abuse of office and accused the country's army-backed government of flouting rule of law. Exiled in South Africa, Ravalomanana called on the Malagasy people to unite in rejecting the leadership of new incumbent Andry Rajoelina, who led weeks of popular protests against him earlier this year and seized power with military

The British Embassy has responded to an article published by the state controlled Herald Newspaper, which claimed the UK government had to ‘airlift’ destitute British pensioners from Zimbabwe because western sanctions had destroyed the economy. The Embassy said it was disappointed that The Herald continues to ‘peddle gross distortions and misinformation’.

Zimbabwe's minister of finance, Tendai Biti, has announced that the fragile government of that country is considering the idea of using the South African rand as it's permanent official currency. "We are looking at various avenues and the adoption of the rand is likelihood," he said.

The South African government's removal of visa requirements for Zimbabweans in April was aimed at easing entry for people still reeling from the crisis in Zimbabwe. But, for Alice Kakwindi, Grace Chimhosva and other cross-border traders, entering South Africa has subsequently turned into a nightmare. On the two occasions that they have visited South Africa's border town of Musina since the relaxation of visa requirements, they spent on average 16 hours trying to clear their goods at the Beitbridge border post.

The security forces in Guinea-Bissau have shot dead a minister and candidate in this month's presidential elections. The authorities say Baciro Dabo died in an exchange of fire when he resisted arrest over an alleged coup plot. But his supporters say he was asleep next to his wife when men in uniform burst into his house at 0400 local time (and GMT) and shot him several times.

Africa's COMESA trade bloc is preparing a financial rescue package for Zimbabwe to help the southern African nation to rebuild its shattered economy, a senior official has said. Finance ministers from Africa's largest trading bloc met to discuss the package ahead of a heads of state summit this weekend in the Zimbabwean resort town of Victoria Falls, said Chungu Mwila, COMESA's director of investment promotion.

Zimbabwe Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai has told the BBC the "acrimony is over" between him and President Robert Mugabe. He made the remarks ahead of a tour of Europe and the US to garner support for his country's four-month-old power-sharing government. He is to meet UK PM Gordon Brown and US President Barack Obama, among others.