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Kleptocracy destroys countries from within. Kleptocrats turn sometime democracies into criminal states that plunder national resources and national patrimonies, depriving citizens of their rights, their tax revenues and their ability to determine policy priorities. A cacophony of African states — Angola, the Comoros, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Gabon, South Africa, … Continue reading
In a devastatingly interconnected world, there is no escaping the spread of COVID-19 into all of Africa, with reverberating consequences for its 1.3 billion inhabitants – and for the rest of us. At the end of March, Africa had fewer than 5,000 cases and a smattering of deaths across almost all its 54 countries. … Continue reading
Climate change, corrupt mismanagement and financial skullduggery kill. That triple cocktail of contemporary poison has sent Zimbabwe, among Africa’s most beleaguered political entities and the continent’s one-time breadbasket, to the brink of wholesale starvation. Hilal Elver, the United Nation’s Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, declared late last month: “The people of Zimbabwe are … Continue reading
Robert Gabriel Mugabe’s death Friday at the age of 95 removed a brutal leader who helped to liberate Zimbabwe (then Rhodesia) from local white settler rule in 1980, presided for a few years over an educational and economic renaissance, and then succumbed to corruption and megalomania from about 1992 to 2017, when he was finally … Continue reading
Sudan’s trial this week of former president Omar al-Bashir for corruption is a striking blow against political impunity in Africa. Its impact on Sudan may be less potent, however, than its sharp message for the remainder of the continent. The trial also emphasizes the power of Africa’s new middle class. Mr. al-Bashir ruled Sudan despotically … Continue reading
Thanks to drought, cyclones, gross mismanagement, inflation, currency manipulation and continued corruption, as many as half of more than 13 million Zimbabweans will experience hunger this year. President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s postcoup administration promised better, but has delivered only economic hardship, fiscal chaos, massive electricity shortages and political desperation to his once rich country. Zimbabweans eat … Continue reading
Many of the iconic fauna that are indelibly associated with Africa, and that attract so many local citizens and foreign tourists alike, no longer spread limitlessly across the vast savannahs of the mid-continent . Nor are many of the larger animals of the un- broken forest often visible . This century’s massive escalation of … Continue reading
China and Vietnam are the world’s largest active consumers of elephant tusks and rhinoceros horn for prestige carvings and for medicinal purposes, as discussed in Part One of this series of articles about the enormous poaching of African animals. There is also a Chinese and Vietnamese market for lion and leopard claws, for jewelry and … Continue reading
China has banned the import of ivory and barred the trading of ivory, but still the poaching of elephants for their tusks and the trafficking of other mammal parts continues, with Chinese entrepreneurs paying African people to kill iconic big species. More can surely be done by the authorities in China, Hong Kong, and Vietnam … Continue reading
Given the controversial attempt by the Trump administration to prevent European and other nations from allowing Huawei to build their much anticipated 5G networks, it is notable that 70 percent of Africa’s 4G networks have been built by that Chinese telecommunications giant. Huawei has also constructed compact cell towers wherever it has built out networks. … Continue reading
Africa and Asia: The Key Issues 