Spring, it seems, is late in London. And it is a violent and horrifying one. Unlike the Arab spring in Egypt, Libya and Syria, it has not united citizens in anger against oppression and corruption but divided Britain and is suggestive of more division, violence and bitterness to come rather than a hoped for flowering [...]
Lydia Scott in Freetown, on how a former head of state, who has been abandoned by successive governments, is coping with hard times. Valentine Esegragbo Melvine Strasser was the world’s youngest head of state when, at just 25, he and his military colleagues usurped power in Sierra Leone in 1992. Yet, since he lost power [...]
On Saturday 9 July 2011, the Republic of South Sudan became the 193rd sovereign state. With the establishment of any new country there are ultimately legal consequences that need to be addressed. Last January 98.83 per cent of the people of Southern Sudan voted for independence from the North in a national referendum. This resulted [...]
While the judges of the Sierra Leone Special Court presently sit in The Hague to ponder the fate of Charles Taylor, the former President of Liberia, for his role in the ‘blood diamond war’ of Sierra Leone, a book has just been published in London which recounts more of the background to one of Africa’s [...]
The opposition in Sierra Leone has chosen a presidential candidate with a political past that could make or mar his chances in next year’s election, writes Desmond Davies The grandees of the Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP) have plumped for Julius Maada Bio as the party’s candidate for the crucial presidential election scheduled for the [...]
The recurring orgy of violence which is clearly along socio-religious lines continues unabated in Maiduguri , North Eastern Nigeria, with some politicians cashing in , on the issue , purely to promote their political interests. The city and its environs continue to smolder with hundreds of people who can afford to, fleeing the area while [...]
The worst drought in two decades has left about 11 million East Africans in acute need of food and water. Western NGOs are urging people to donate money while images of malnourished children appear on the world’s TV screens. Is Africa still the helpless and weak continent the media portrayed it to be twenty years [...]
In the middle of a roundabout in the southern Sudanese capital of Juba there is a 23 feet tall digital clock counting down the days, minutes and seconds until the 9th of July. Tomorrow, the world will have a new country. It is uncertain what will happen when South Sudan takes leave from Khartoum 55 [...]
A report by the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) has suggested that the Democratic Republic of Congo might be on the verge of collapse, as widespread disaffection for President Joseph Kabila grows. Endemic corruption and the failure to bring broad and sustained economic growth have led to the grave possibility, the report predicts, of violence [...]
As many former British colonies around the world continue to celebrate 50 years or more of independence, a group of Commonwealth academics gathered at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies in London recently to debate the merits and faults of the so called “Westminster Model”, the basis at the time of the newly emerging countries’ constitutions [...]
