Daniel Howden | June 25

The Independent - Six years ago, the world came together to stop a trade in gems that was fuelling civil war in Africa. Now the architect of the deal has quit, warning that jewels 'have blood all over them' again

The leading architect of the international system to stop the trade in blood diamonds has warned that the safety net is close to collapse with governments and the industry failing to act against gross violations.

Ian Smillie, the "grandfather" of the landmark Kimberley Process, that was agreed in response to appalling civil wars in Africa fuelled by illegal gems, said he had "stomped out" on his scheme as it was no longer working.

"It isn't regulating the rough diamond trade," the Canadian expert said yesterday. "It is in danger of becoming irrelevant and it's letting all manner of crooks off the hook."

William Maclean | London | June 19

Reuters - Under pressure in his Pakistan enclaves, Osama bin Laden is facing a familiar quandary: Where to go next? The answer is unlikely to be Yemen or Somalia, despite their new prominence as regional al Qaeda sanctuaries.

U.S. drone attacks and a looming Pakistan army offensive against one of al Qaeda's main allies in a northwestern tribal area have stirred speculation that bin Laden's men are seeking a less risky refuge for their anti-Western campaign.

But simply leaving Pakistan's remote Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) could expose the world's most wanted man and his entourage of planners and bodyguards to satellite detection and the curious gaze of a local population of uncertain loyalty.

Related thread: Yemen could be "another Afghanistan" -EU official

Johannesburg | June 17

IRIN - It will take at least ten years to develop a variety of staple grain that will survive in the climates caused by global warming in most parts of Africa, and the continent has less than two decades in which to do it, warn the authors of a new study.

"The countries have to start developing varieties now, but many of these countries don't have breeding programmes," said Luigi Guarino, one of three authors of a study to be published on 19 June in the US journal, Global Environmental Change. "This study, we hope, at least raises the flag."

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), an international scientific body, has predicted that food production in Africa could halve by 2020 as global warming pushes temperatures up and droughts become more intense.

The new study by researchers at Stanford University's Program on Food Security and the Environment, in the US, and the Rome-based Global Crop Diversity Trust, noted that "For a majority of Africa's farmers, warming will rapidly take climate not only beyond the range of their personal experience, but also beyond the experience of farmers within their own country."

_{Previously posted articles:
** Africa: The Second Scramble for Africa Starts
** Researchers urge rules to stop 'land-grabbing' worsening hunger
** Foreign land grabs for food could fuel unrest
** China's new export: farmers
** Financial crisis may worsen food crunch it eclipsed
** Rich countries launch great land grab to safeguard food supply}

Kate Connolly | Berlin | June 17

The Guardian - Twenty blue chip German companies are pooling their resources with the aim of harnessing solar power in the deserts of north Africa and transporting the clean electricity to Europe.

The businesses, which include some of the biggest names in European energy, finance and manufacturing, will form a consortium next month. If successful, the highly ambitious plan could see Europe fuelled by solar energy within a decade.

The consortium behind what would be the biggest ever solar energy initiative will first raise awareness and interest among other investors for the project, known as Desertec, which is estimated to cost around €400bn (£338bn).

BREAKING: $15 Million Settlement in Wiwa vs. Shell Oil

I was skeptical this would happen, but it is clearly an indication of how strong the case was against Shell…

This just in from the Center for Constitutional Rights:

Settlement Reached in Human Rights Cases Against Royal Dutch/Shell

On Eve of Trial, Settlement Agreements Provide $15.5 Million for Compensation to Nigerian Human Rights Activists and to Establish Trust Fund

Agencies | 9 June

Al Jazeera -
Oil giant Royal Dutch Shell has agreed to settle a lawsuit accusing the firm of complicity in the executions of human rights activists in Nigeria for $15.5m, the families of those killed have said.

The settlement agreement came on Monday as the more than decade-long dispute was due to go to trial in a district court in New York.

The lawsuit accused Shell of human rights abuses, including violations in relation to the hangings in 1995 of Ken Saro-Wiwa, a well known rights activist, and eight other protesters by Nigeria's then-military government.

Megan Rowling | June 4

Reuters -

International food experts and African politicians are pushing for guidelines to prevent the surging trend of rich investors buying land in developing countries from hurting poor farmers and causing food crises.

The amount of land under negotiation in deals to help cash-rich countries in the Gulf and Asia secure food supplies for their growing populations has reached 15 to 20 million hectares, roughly equivalent to cropland in Germany or France, estimates the Washington-based International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). The monetary value is a huge - $20 to $30 billion.

IFPRI argues in a new policy brief that there are both opportunities and threats for poor nations - many of them in east and southern Africa - that are leasing or selling vast tracts of their land to foreign investors.

On the positive side, land acquisitions have the potential to inject much-needed investment into agriculture and rural areas, boosting food production and jobs. But that depends on the terms and conditions.

"The potential here is great. The question is the extent to which this translates into benefits for the poor and smallholders in the developing countries becoming hosts to these arrangements," said IFPRI research fellow Ruth Meinzen-Dick. "The question is, do these people...get new jobs and income, or do they lose access to the land they have been relying on?"

There's also a fear that, with many east African countries suffering food shortages, renting out land to foreign governments and companies to feed people overseas will make hunger at home even worse.

Stephanie McCrummen | Kisumu, Kenya | May 26

WaPo - With the U.S. economy in turmoil, his job as a truck driver no longer secure and his upwardly mobile life in the Dallas suburbs in jeopardy, James Odhiambo decided it was time for a change.

He wanted a healthier lifestyle for his family, less anxiety, fewer 14-hour days. So he recently traded his deluxe apartment, the pickup truck, the dishwasher and $4.99 McDonald's combos for life in a place he considers relatively better: sub-Saharan Africa.

"Right now I'm no stress, no anxiety," said Odhiambo, 34, relaxing in his family home in this western Kenyan city along the shores of Lake Victoria. "Think of it this way: When I was in the U.S., I was close to 300 pounds. Now, I'm like 200. The biggest thing for me was quality of life."

While that may seem counterintuitive to Americans accustomed to bleaker images of Africa, recent studies have documented the flight of immigrant professionals from the United States to their home countries. Chinese and Indian workers increasingly say they see better opportunities and lifestyles at home. And diaspora associations of Nigerians, Ghanaians, Kenyans and other Africans say their members -- mostly from middle-class backgrounds -- are joining the exodus, choosing life in the land of slow Internet connections and power outages over the pressures of recession-era America.

Cooperative Security Locations, Not Permanent Just Enduring
Charles Lemos | May 11 | MYDD

The Department of Defense has released a FY 2010 Budget Request Summary Justification (pdf.) presentation outlining its proposed expenditures. Some are curious, a few are disconcerting.

The FY 2010 Base budget includes $46 million for a cooperative security location at Palanquero Air Base in Colombia.

This is news to Colombians. Though Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos broached the subject of stationing a base in Colombia back in February, that trial balloon did not float. Colombians remain opposed to any US military presence in the country.

Significant investment at Camp Lemonier, Djibouti, a forward operating site for which responsibility has been moved from CENTCOM to AFRICOM.

It looks like AFRICOM, which remains homeless or perhaps better put awaiting a home in temporary quarters in Stuggart, Germany, is going to get rammed down hapless Djibou

Joel Achenbach | May 1

WaPo - Africans are more genetically diverse than the inhabitants of the rest of the world combined, according to a sweeping study that carried researchers into remote regions to sample the bloodlines of more than 100 distinct populations.

The report, published yesterday in the journal Science Express, suggests that, because of historical migrations and genetic mixing across the continent, it will be hard for African Americans to trace their ancestry in fine detail. African American genealogies are increasingly popular and commercialized, but the authors of the new study cast doubt on how precise such searches can be, given the complexity of the genetic makeup of Africans.

"It may be very challenging to trace back ancestry to particular tribes or ethnic groups," said Sarah Tishkoff, a University of Pennsylvania geneticist who led the international research team.

The first anatomically modern humans originated in Africa about 200,000 years ago, and all humans today are their direct descendants. The study points to an area along the Namibia-South Africa border, the homeland of the San people, as the starting point for a southwest-to-northeast migratory route that carried people through Africa and across the Red Sea into Eurasia.

Tishkoff said the new findings will help medical researchers tailor drug treatments for different groups of Africans rather than treating them as homogenous.

Apr 28

BBC - A court in French Polynesia has begun hearing complaints from former workers at France's nuclear weapons test sites.

The cases, being heard for the first time, relate to work in Mururoa and Fangataufa and seek recognition and compensation for ill health.

Eight cases have been lodged, although five of the workers have already died of what have been called radiation-linked diseases.

In March, the French government enacted legislation to allow compensation.

This could apply in cases relating to nuclear tests in the Pacific and Africa.

^{reprinted with the kind permission of the author.}

~Kyle Mills

First of all, I don't want to be misunderstood here. I have nothing against a healthy amount of sensitively with regard to the subject of race. In the U.S., increased empathy has gone a long way to clearing out the obnoxious and destructive behavior left over from a time that is thankfully becoming history. In fact, I'd never given the PC movement much thought at all until I moved to Africa to research a book.

In many ways, political correctness is just another luxury made possible by America's wealth and stability. Obsessive self-censoring and blinding ideology is little more than an inconvenience to most Americans, with no potential to cause a child to starve, die of disease, or be killed in an endless civil war. Of course, the reluctance of the media and organizations like the NAACP to frankly discuss the problems plaguing African-Americans may contribute to the persistence of those problems, but that's another article.

More after the jump.

10 April

Al jazeera -
A US court has ruled that victims of South Africa's apartheid-era government can sue General Motors, IBM and other corporations accused of complicity in human rights abuses.

A federal judge in New York ruled on Wednesday that joint actions against the corporations under a US law allowing rights claims from abroad should be addressed in a US court.

Car-makers Ford and Daimler and defence firm Rheinmetall are the other companies set to face legal action from South African plaintiffs.

March 30

BBC -

Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi has stormed out of the Arab League summit in Qatar having denounced the Saudi king for his ties with the West.

He disrupted the opening session by criticising King Abdullah, calling him a British product and an American ally. Col Gaddafi has angered Arab leaders in the past with sharp remarks at summits.

Meanwhile, leaders have been urged to reject an international arrest warrant against Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir for war crimes in Darfur.

Arrest first "those who have committed massacres and atrocities in Palestine, Iraq and Lebanon", Syria's President Bashar al-Assad said.

Daniel Volman & William Minter | March 13, 2009 | FPIF

Making Peace or Fueling War in Africa

Excerpts from an all encompassing analysis of AFRICOM, African Foreign Policy and challenges.

In theory, AFRICOM's activities, as well as related peacekeeping training programs administered by the Department of State, should be integrated within overall U.S. policy, including diplomatic action on African crises and collaboration with African, European, and United Nations partners in peacekeeping operations. In practice, as the Henry L. Stimson Center's Victoria Holt and Michael McKinnon have said, the United States has been ambivalent about multilateral action, under both the Clinton and Bush administrations. Democrats and Republicans alike have approved and supported United Nations and African Union peacekeeping missions. But the United States is still regularly from $700 million to $1.5 billion in arrears on peacekeeping dues owed the United Nations. And it failed to respond even to urgent requests for essential logistical support, such as helicopters for the mission in Darfur. Coordination of diplomacy with support for peacekeeping has been weak even within the U.S. government, while the U.S. military remains opposed to U.S. participation in multilateral operations that are not commanded by U.S. officers.

As of January 31, 2009, there were 91,049 uniformed personnel on 16 United Nations peacekeeping missions, at an annual cost of about $7.1 billion. Of these, over 70%, or 65,270, were deployed on seven missions in Africa, including 18,411 in MONUC (Democratic Republic of the Congo), 15,179 in UNAMID (Darfur), 11.963 in UNMIL (Liberia), and 9,999 on UNMIS (Sudan). Of the total uniformed personnel on UN peacekeeping missions, the United States contributed 90, or less than 1/10 of one percent.

Why do we have so much power at the UN? Also see this peachy State Dept article: Training Boosts Maritime Safety in Africa

Mar 27

Middle East Times -

Arab leaders rightly demanded justice over Israel’s war crimes in Gaza. But they are shielding Sudan’s President Omar al-Bashir from justice for his involvement in crimes against humanity in Darfur, because they want that same support if their name is called. Photo shows Bashir (l) meeting with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in Cairo on March 25. (Sipa Photo via Newscom)

Rights Groups Lash Out at Bashir's Visit to Egypt

BBC - Pope Benedict XVI has said that handing out condoms is not the answer in the fight against HIV/Aids, as he makes his first visit to Africa as pontiff.

Speaking en route to Cameroon, he said distribution of condoms "increases the problem". The Vatican urges abstinence.

The Pope will also visit Angola on his week-long trip, where thousands are expected to attend open-air masses.

According to Vatican figures, the number of Catholics in Africa has been rising steadily in recent years.

Baptised Catholics made up 17% of the African population in 2006, compared with 12% in 1978, the Vatican says.

Pope Benedict said on the eve of his trip that he wanted to wrap his arms around the entire continent, with "its painful wounds, its enormous potential and hopes".

I wonder how many converts there would be if the church actually showed concern for their health by passing out condoms like candy.

Reed Kramer | Feb 26 | Allafrica

George Clooney's meeting to discuss Darfur with Vice President Joe Biden and with President Barack Obama Monday night at the White House provided one of the first glimmers of Africa involvement from the top echelon of the new administration.

According to Biden spokeswoman Elizabeth Alexander, Clooney was told that Sudan policy is under "ongoing review." The Academy Award-winning actor, who skipped the Oscar's ceremony Sunday night to fly to Washington, said he welcomed what he heard "because there was some concern this could fall off the radar."

That concern has been spreading among Africa watchers as days go by without any significant Africa-related pronouncements - particularly, no announced selection of a person to head the Africa Bureau at the State Department. Similar misgivings are being expressed about the administration's slow movement to fill top foreign assistance-related posts, which also affect U.S. relations with Africa.

Rep. Frank Wolf (Republican-Virginia), who has made five trips to Sudan since 1989, asked President Obama in a letter this week to select former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist as special envoy for Sudan. Frist, who as a surgeon undertook medical missions to the country and was "a leader in declaring what was happening in Sudan to be genocide," Wolf wrote.

Frist? What did Africa ever do to us ;)

Katrina Manson | Sierra Leone | Feb 27

The Independent - They broke the silence from tribal elders and politicians – but paid a high personal price for trying to protect millions of young girls from the knife

The female journalist was snatched by members of a secret society, forcibly stripped and made to parade naked through the streets. It might sound like an atrocity from the time when Sierra Leone was ripped apart by a bloody civil war, but in fact the public humiliation was exacted in the diamond-rich eastern town of Kenema just this month. The woman's alleged crime was reporting on female genital mutilation.

While the attack was condemned by media watchdogs as "disgraceful behaviour worthy of a bygone age", one woman who was not surprised was Rugiatu Turay. When she was 12 Ms Turay was stolen away by family members and underwent what some politely refer to as "circumcision". She calls it "torture". For the past six years, she has been waging a war against the practice, which many in Sierra Leone, including senior politicians, see as an initiation rite.

Denise Grady | Dodoma, Tanzania | Feb 24

NYT - Lying side by side on a narrow bed, talking and giggling and poking each other with skinny elbows, they looked like any pair of teenage girls trading jokes and secrets.

But the bed was in a crowded hospital ward, and between the moments of laughter, Sarah Jonas, 18, and Mwanaidi Swalehe, 17, had an inescapable air of sadness. Pregnant at 16, both had given birth in 2007 after labor that lasted for days. Their babies had died, and the prolonged labor had inflicted a dreadful injury on the mothers: an internal wound called a fistula, which left them incontinent and soaked in urine.

Last month at the regional hospital in Dodoma, they awaited expert surgeons who would try to repair the damage. For each, two previous, painful operations by other doctors had failed.

“It will be great if the doctors succeed,” Ms. Jonas said softly in Swahili, through an interpreter.

Along with about 20 other girls and women ranging in age from teens to 50s, Ms. Jonas and Ms. Swalehe had taken long bus rides from their villages to this hot, dusty city for operations paid for by a charitable group, Amref, the African Medical and Research Foundation.

The foundation had brought in two surgeons who would operate and teach doctors and nurses from different parts of Tanzania how to repair fistulas and care for patients afterward.

Silvia Aloisi | Rome | Feb 18

Reuters - Big purchases of African land by richer countries in a drive for food security could fuel unrest if the rights of local farmers are not taken into consideration, a land rights campaigner warned on Wednesday.

Madiodio Niasse, director of the International Land Coalition -- which brings together intergovernmental organisations and civil society groups to promote land rights in poor nations -- said there was a general lack of transparency in international land transactions that needed to be addressed.

Middle Eastern countries flush with oil cash but also Asian nations worried about their food security have begun buying large swathes of farmland abroad after a supply scare last year drove prices of most food items to record highs.

"Since the middle of 2008, there has been this huge international trend of purchasing land abroad. Our fear is that if it's not organised and regulated, it will have counterproductive effects and could lead to social unrest," Niasse told Reuters in an interview.

Jason McLure | Feb 3

Bloomberg -

Meles said that Africa should take a more aggressive stance in seeking compensation from rich countries that have spent billions of dollars bailing out their financial systems. The world’s biggest financial companies have suffered losses of more than $1 trillion since the outbreak of the U.S. subprime mortgage crisis in 2007.
.
“A bank in these countries which is deemed too important to fail is getting more assistance, more bailout money than the whole continent of Africa,” said Meles. “We have to insist that Africa is at least as important in the global economy as the in

Feb 2

BBC -

Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi has been elected as chairman of the 53-nation African Union.

"He is currently addressing the assembly as president, to outline his programme and his intentions," she said.

On Sunday, the summit debated a Libyan-backed proposal to set up a single government - the United States of Africa.

In a compromise, the summit agreed to transform the African Union Commission, which oversees the body, into an AU Authority that would have a broader mandate, Mr Kikwete said.

"In principle, we said the ultimate is the United States of Africa. How we proceed to that ultimate - there are building blocks," Mr Kikwete said.

Geraldine Bedell | Feb 1t

The Observer - A self-made billionaire, Mo Ibrahim was last year named as Britain's most influential black person. Now he's working to inspire transparency in African government by giving away millions to the continent's leaders. But is it inspired philanthropy? Or an elaborate form of bribery?

Aidan Jones | Valleta, Malta | Dec 29

CSM - Island nation struggles with a flood of illegal migrants bound for Europe

Shaqaale Hassan handed $1,000 to people traffickers, confident it would secure his passage from Libya to Italy, and the European Union's sprawling labor market.

Instead, after three days adrift in the Mediterranean Sea, the small speed boat carrying the 23-year-old Somali and two dozen other illegal migrants was intercepted by a European Union patrol and the passengers were taken to a detention center on the nearby island of Malta – the EU's smallest member state.

Mr. Hassan says that he fled Mogadishu, Somalia, after a close friend was killed in cross-fire between militias. But after five months on Malta he says his prospects are limited. "The Maltese people don't want us. There's no work here and when we find a job we are paid nothing," he says. "In Somalia you live or you die, ... Here I am not dying, but I am not alive. I want to go to Italy."

He is among nearly 2,500 Africans – the majority from Somalia, Eritrea, Ethiopia, and Sudan – to arrive this year. At least 550 other migrants fleeing war and poverty are reported to have died during the journey, although the actual toll is likely to be much higher.