By Alex de Waal

The political geometry of Sudan defies resolution. No sooner had a framework been agreed for the provisional settlement of the North-South conflict in 2002 than the war in Darfur blew away all conventional wisdom about how the country could achieve peace and stability. The twin challenges of deciding whether Sudan is one country or two, and seeking a more inclusive and democratic system of government, combine to create an equation with no solution. For decades, Sudan’s leaders have tried to manage the unmanageable by alternating doomed revolutionary projects with simply buying time. The latter—in which tactical crisis management drives out strategic problem solving—has been the order of the day for the last decade. Today, the ruling party hopes that oil money will sufficiently change the game for them literally to purchase a solution. read the rest of this entry… »

By Mark Bellamy and J. Stephen Morrison

The crisis in Zimbabwe is now at a critical stage. Government-instigated brutality is out of control. Regional and worldwide alarm over the brazen and increasingly unpredictable rule of Robert Mugabe is at an all-time high.

By any reckoning, free and fair presidential elections in Zimbabwe next week are impossible. Mugabe and his security chiefs have warned they will accept no outcome other than his “re-election.” Adding a few more election observers or achieving a pause in pre-election violence will change little. Faced with Mugabe’s ruthlessness, Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai may well decide in coming days to pull out of the race altogether. read the rest of this entry… »

By Loro Horta

While quite a lot of ink has been spilled over China’s scramble for African oil and mineral resources, little notice has been taken of its growing demand for food stuffs from Africa and for new agricultural land. As China grows wealthier, the eating habits of millions of its citizens have become far more demanding. In 1985, the Chinese consumed an average of 25 kilos of meat per person per year – today consumption has doubled to 50 kilos. The consumption of other food stuffs such as seafood, rice, soybeans, sugar, cereals and other crops has risen by 30 to 40 percent in the past decade. China’s growing demand for food and the rapid shrinking of available arable land in China itself due to environmental degradation and urbanization have made finding new agricultural lands an urgent priority for the Chinese government. read the rest of this entry… »

By Marielle Debos

Recent events in Chad and Sudan show once again that a regional approach is required if there is to be any hope of a lasting solution to the persistent conflict in this part of Africa. In February 2008, a Chadian rebel alliance backed by Khartoum launched an unsuccessful attack on N’Djamena, Chad’s capital. Three months later, fighters from the Darfurian Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), which has been a close ally of the Chadian regime for the last two years, carried the conflict into Omdurman, just across the Nile from Khartoum, Sudan’s capital. While there is no definitive indication that Chad’s President Idriss Déby’s was involved in JEM’s assault, it is clear that the conflicts in Chad and Darfur have become increasingly intertwined. read the rest of this entry… »

By Dave Eaton

During 2005-2006, I spent 12 months in northern Kenya, a region of endemic violence based on cattle raids among rival communities. Here I was able to observe the peace-building efforts undertaken by various non-governmental organizations (NGOs) with the support of international aid donors. A popular approach among NGOs today is to create affiliated peace groups, usually a handful of local operatives led by an individual within the organization. They are tasked with organizing meetings between opposed communities and encouraging combatants to turn over their weapons to the government. These projects are seen as an essential not only because of their expected contributions to peace, but also because NGOs cannot carry out their other relief and development missions in an environment of conflict and risk. It is believed that these programs, once properly implemented, will also contribute to reducing violence. read the rest of this entry… »

By Thomas Cannell
May 19, 2008

In October 2007, the Berkley Center at Georgetown University, Washington, D.C.’s famed Jesuit institution, released a report entitled Faith Communities Engage the HIV/AIDS Crisis. The authors, Lucy Keough and Katherine Marshall, reviewed the literature on religion and AIDS to conclude that the role of faith in relation to the pandemic is poorly understood and complex. To Keough and Marshall, faith-based organizations, which they interpreted widely to include church-based groups, religious NGOs, and traditional healers, can be like a “double-edged sword” in the confrontation with AIDS. They are inclined towards the view of Gideon Byamugisha, a Ugandan priest and AIDS activist, that the moral role of faith groups has too often entrenched the structural determinants of the epidemic – poverty, gender inequalities, and stigma. In this view, the church should find in the epidemic not a moral challenge, but a struggle to care for the sick and spread AIDS awareness. read the rest of this entry… »

By Norma Kriger

Zimbabweans’ experience of elections, especially since 2000 when the MDC first challenged ZANU PF rule, has made them cynical about elections as a mechanism to transfer power.  They have learned that ZANU PF will do whatever it takes to win elections.  2007 was rated the worst year in terms of the number of human rights abuses since 2001, most perpetrated by ZANU PF state and paramilitary forces, and aimed at decimating the top and lower level leadership of the opposition in advance of the anticipated 2008 elections.[i]  Also, there was growing disillusionment with the opposition. The March 29 2008 presidential, parliamentary, and local government elections initially aroused little interest among dejected voters.  The MDC had split into two bickering factions in late 2005, the majority faction led by Morgan Tsvangirai (MDC-T) and the minority faction by Arthur Mutambara (MDC-M).  The MDC-T was increasingly bedeviled by youth violence, problems of leadership transparency and accountability, and interest in positions for the material rewards they provided.  Its political culture had begun to mimic the organization which it sought to remove. read the rest of this entry… »

By Jonathan Holslag

BUKAVU - Holed up behind barbed wire and sandbags, two soldiers gaze over the green landscape of Congo’s Kivu Province.  The forested hills around them are silent, but they are guarding a hub of activity.  Meticulously stationed military vehicles surround a few dozen troops marching around a flag planted in the middle of a dusty parade ground – a Chinese flag. “We are here to maintain order and regional stability,” explains a young lieutenant in impeccable French. Deployed in the resource-rich heart of Africa, this army unit forms only a small part of the Chinese troops that have been sent to six different African states. All of China’s troops in Africa are participants in United Nations peacekeeping operations under UN mandates – in contrast to the 1,400 or so U.S. troops deployed unilaterally in the Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa (CJTF-HOA), part of the Bush Administration’s Global War on Terror. read the rest of this entry… »

By John Liebhardt

Even before food prices started inching up during the 2005-06 growing season in the northern hemisphere, the World Food Program reported a troubling trend: donor countries were contributing less food for emergency relief at a time when the number of food emergencies had doubled to nearly 30 every year. Rising worldwide food demand is confronting a stagnant supply, and commodity prices have risen to their highest point since the early 1970s. As a result, a solution to sub-Saharan Africa’s chronic food shortages seems to have faded ever farther into the distance.  The region is the planet’s largest remaining pocket of intractable food insecurity, where the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates that one in three people lack access to adequate food supply.  African states receive a lion’s share of the world’s food aid deliveries, yet Africans spend more GDP per person on food than people in most other places. read the rest of this entry… »

By J Stephen Morrison and Mark Bellamy

After 28 years of increasingly violent misrule, the reign of Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe has entered its endgame. Frustrated by his failure to secure victory in the March 29 parliamentary and presidential elections, Mugabe has turned loose his security forces, ruling party militias, ‘war veterans’, and youth gangs to terrorize populations suspected of sympathizing with the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). Reports of violent assaults and killings are proliferating. As in Burma in September 2007, resort to repression has raised the specter of both a spasm of state violence against civilians and the consolidation of security chiefs’ power, organized under the Joint Operations Command. It has undermined already slim hopes that a runoff presidential election could be a free and fair contest. read the rest of this entry… »