Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf has won a share of one of the western world’s most prestigious awards, yet the residents of the capital Monrovia have not had running water for the full six years of her term in office, writes Thomas C. Mountain.

The latest editorial in your publication on the Zim elections lacks very important information and raises questions about the level of knowledge of the writers or establishes a very disturbing bias on their part.

To start with the government of Zimbabwe provided 3.1 billionZim dollars to the opposition to cover the costs of election campaigning, with the ruling part receiving 3.3bill. Why isn’t this mentioned anywhere? Shouldn’t this fact be made known to your readers so they can make up their own minds about the veracity and accuracy of the reporting on Zimbabwe? Either the writers are ignorant of this fact or deliberately concealing it from your readership.

I am no fan of Mugabe and never have been. Yet it is hard to swallow all the disinformation passed off as journalism on the matter. Your publication does your readers a disservice by failing to provide both sides of the matter.

Eritrea is the only country in Africa to start winning the war against what Eritrean President Issias Aferwerki has listed as one of the major threats to Eritrean survival, HIV/AIDS, by reducing HIV/AIDS infection rates from 3% to 2.5%, as reported by Dr. Mary Polan of Stanford University School of Medicine at the Eritrean Festival in Oakland, CA on Friday, Aug. 13, 2004.

Having visited Eritrea a number of times to help operate on Eritrean women suffering from fistula, Dr. Polan spoke first hand on how the Eritrean leadership has taken the threat of HIV/AIDS seriously. She spoke of how condoms are now placed in dresser drawers in all hotel rooms in Eritrea and the government has placed billboards prominently throughout the countryside promoting condom use and that advertisements for condom use are regular played on Eritrean television.

HIV/AIDS is ravaging much of Africa, with Ethiopia suffering from what is widely considered to be a conservative estimate of a 15% and growing infection rate and with Botswana reportedly suffering up to a 50% infection rate among government officials. Eritrea is the only country in Africa to be able to stem the tide of HIV/AIDS infection, starting to win what will certainly be a long and difficult fight against one of the most serious crises Africans face.

Despite a socially conservative tradition Eritrea has broken social taboos concerning discussing sexual activities and made HIV/AIDS prevention a priority topic and has been able to cut the infection rate by over 15% in the last 5 years. Once again, a role model has been established in Africa that should be promoted amongst all people, especially Africans at home and abroad, with this being done by one of the worlds smallest, most resource poor country's, plagued by disasters both natural and manmade. Why is it that Eritrea continues to be ignored by so many despite her accomplishments?

The first thing one notices upon landing in Asmara, the capital of Eritrea, is that the streets are clean. The people are friendly, dressed very smartly and there is no evidence of homelessness or beggars. This in a country of an annual per capita income of about $350. The streets of Asmara are safe to walk, even more so for "tilliano´s" or "sa´ada", white people, anywhere, anytime of day or night. Serious crime is rare, to the point of being non existent for most Eritreans. When you leave Asmara the first thing you notice is the reforestation and soil conservation efforts of Eritrea´s student summer national service program, along with the peacetime military. Imagine the highlands of the North African Rift mountains, 8,000 foot altitude, driving down towards the lowlands for hours, through some very rugged terrain, and every cliffside and mountain is layered with walls, and where possible, young trees. Many thousands of miles of walls and millions of trees, all done since independence in 1991.