Financial services are reaching the world’s poorest by mobile phone. Thanks to a mobile banking system launched last month in Senegal, people with no previous access to bank accounts were able to watch the World Cup via satellite services that they paid for electronically with a few taps on a mobile phone. The service...
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I first knew Mozambique through close contact in Dar es Salaam with FRELIMO in the early and difficult years – the 1960s and the first-half of 1970s – of its armed liberation struggle. Then Mozambique was seeking both to unite itself and to find political and military purchase against an intransigent and arrogant Portuguese...
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International media attention is focused this week on the visit of the US Secretary of State, Hilary Clinton, to seven countries in Africa. Judging by the behaviour of representatives of many African governments, there are great expectations that this visit – following so closely after President Obama’s two earlier visits to Egypt and Ghana...
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In recognition of “the emerging strategic importance of Africa,” in February 2007 President Bush ordered the creation of AFRICOM, the U.S. Africa Command. AFRICOM, like CENTCOM (Central Command) and EUCOM (European Command), centralizes all authority for the U.S. military operating in the African region under one command structure. AFRICOM also transfers many duties that...
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Earlier in the decade, biofuels were hailed as the energy panacea, the silver bullet to solve oil shortages and abide by environmental concerns. The European Union recently took the lead in imposing the use of these liquid or gaseous fuels made from plants. But the green credentials of biofuels have since been disputed. The...
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Following training by the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, a hundred farmers in central Kenya, armed with an improved understanding of their local markets are commanding higher prices for their bananas. “These farmers used to sell bananas by just looking at the bunch. A trader would come and dictate the price. Before,...
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Congo has fallen prey to a lot of people that want to loot its natural resources The crisis in Congo shows no signs of slowing down, as government forces continue to battle rebel groups loyal to renegade General Laurent Nkunda. Investigative journalist and author Wayne Madsen, of “The Wayne Madsen Report,” believes that Congo...
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Just weeks after President George W. Bush signed the Order creating a new US military command dedicated to Africa, AFRICOM, events on the mineral-rich continent have erupted which suggest a major agenda of the incoming Obama Presidency will be for the son of a black Kenyan to focus US resources, military and other, on...
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Despite Congolese rebel leader Laurent Nkunda’s promise to support a UN backed cease-fire, fighting in the Democratic Republic of Congo continues. Government forces battled Laurent Nkunda’s rebel army north of the provincial capital of Goma on the weekend, in a battle that has so far displaced at least 250,000 people since August. The current...
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