The AU moots a Rapid Intervention Force. Will this lead to more Comoros type actions?
The Ivorian crisis triggers recognition about the nutritional,environmental and agricultural benefits of soya.
Mohammed Yunus believes that beggars can be turned into entrepreneurs.
Challenging the perception of Ajegunle, Lagos.
Can Mugabe be toppled?
The need for added sophistication in Nigeria's banking sector.
Ellen Johnson Sirleaf stated in her speech delivered at the Sixth Annual Nelson Mandela Lecture that:
There are today over 20 democracies in sub-Saharan Africa. Consider the transformation – in the space of a generation, democracy in Africa has spread from a very few countries to more than one third of the continent. Some of these are nascent democracies that are still fragile. But for others, the change more clearly prevails. It is hard to predict the future and the change will not be easy or smooth in every country, but never before in world history have so many low income countries become democracies in so short a period of time. Never before has the resolve of African leaders, backed by needed and judiciously used military intervention, ended a rebellion against an elected government in power, as was recently done in the Comoros.
This enormous change engendered by an empowered citizenry has huge implications for Africa and for those few countries that continue to frustrate the will of the people. This New Africa is being built, every day, by the African people – people who reach out across boundaries – real and imagined. They are not waiting for the Renaissance to be determined by states and by governments alone for they know that they are a part of an interconnected world...[continue reading]
Bret Stephens writing in the WSJ thinks its time to invoke the 'Responsibility to Protect' doctrine in Zimbabwe:
A solution for Zimbabwe's crisis isn't hard to come by: Someone – ideally the British(better still the AU...they did it in Comoros) – must remove Mr. Mugabe by force, install Mr. Tsvangirai as president, arm his supporters, prevent any rampages, and leave. "Saving Darfur" is a somewhat different story, but it also involves applying Western military force to whatever degree is necessary to get Khartoum to come to terms with an independent or autonomous Darfur. Burma? Same deal.
International relations theorists, including prominent Obama adviser Susan Rice, justify these sorts of interventions under the rubric of a "Responsibility to Protect" – a concept that comes oddly close to Kipling's White Man's Burden. So close, in fact, that its inherent paternalism has hitherto inhibited many liberals from endorsing the kinds of interventions toward which they are now tip-toeing, thousands of deaths too late.
