With all the current talk in the media about the riots on the streets of the UK, Alex Free argues that the focus should be on the real looters in the country and global economy at large.

Given the negative impact of the fast food industry on food sovereignty and security, isn't it a little odd that the World Food Programme has teamed up with KFC to fund its hunger relief efforts, asks Alex Free. Fast food's methods of production and perpetual drive to lower costs work to undermine ‘environments, biodiversity and local people’s access to land’, says Free, while tackling world hunger demands the exact opposite: ‘Working towards sustainable access to food; recognising local expertise; promoting biodiversity; and putting people before profits.’

David Killingray’s ‘impressive’ synthesis of primary and secondary sources on Africans' contributions to the British Second World War effort ‘presents an excellent overview of the experiences of African soldiers called upon to fight in defence of their colonial master,’ writes Alex Free. Although ‘analytically inconsistent at times’, this does not detract from ‘what is a sophisticated and coherent narrative and encouraging antidote to historiography’s historical predilection for histories-from-above,’ says Free.

The recent arrest of two Dutch women for ‘ambush marketing’ at South Africa’s World Cup Soccer City stadium has revealed the legislative influence Fifa has exerted on its host, writes Alex Free. Pointing out that Fifa has acquired the nickname ‘Thiefa’ among some quarters, Free takes a look at who is really doing the ‘ambushing’.

The 2010 Africa Oyé festival took place in Liverpool on Saturday 19 and Sunday 20 June. Alex Free reflects back on the ‘UK’s biggest Africa-based music festival’, which boasted ‘an eclectic selection of accomplished musicians from across the pan-African world’.

In the wake of the environmental disaster caused by the 20 April explosion of BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil rig, the oil multinational was immediately pressured into providing adequate compensation by the US government. This is an experience palpably not shared by Nigerian people in the face of another multinational, Shell, in the country's Niger Delta, writes Alex Free.

As millions of UK citizens cast their votes in the country’s general and local elections, Alex Free considers the attitudes of the three major parties – Labour, the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats – towards engaging with other parts of the world as set out in their manifestos, for a sense of how the outcome of the election might affect Africa and the global South.