Africa Archive

NAIROBI, Kenya — The collapse of the World Trade Organization talks in the past month has presented Africa with a double predicament. On the one hand are the lost trade opportunities following the collapse of the WTO’s Doha Round. If the talks had succeeded in favor of Africa’s position, the continent would have gained better market access to the European, U.S. and Japanese economies. The continent also sought to successfully negotiate for the elimination of agriculture production and export subsidies that make produce from developed countries cheaper than Africa’s in the world market. On the other hand, the preferential trade […]

ACCRA, Ghana — Taking a break from work, hotel desk clerk Augustine Kumi, 23, briefly wondered aloud why he and many fellow Ghanaians are poor. After all, his stable country enjoys a democratically elected government and, he pointed out, it boasts valued natural resources such as gold, timber and cocoa. That doesn’t account for the high inflows of foreign aid, perhaps comprising more than 40 percent of the annual budget. But then Kumi answered his own question. “We don’t have good leaders,” he said. “They are greedy.” Kumi’s gripes, in part, are tied to his frustrations with President John Kufuor’s […]

When Marine Lt. Gen. John F. Sattler presided over the July transfer of the American-led anti-terrorism task force in the Horn of Africa from the U.S. Marines Corps to the U.S. Navy, his statement of achievement was simple. “Since the camp was established [in late 2002] there has not been one terrorist attack in the Horn of Africa, although there have been many attempts,” he said. When the American military’s Combined Joint Task Force – Horn of Africa (CJTF-HOA) was established in November 2002 in the tiny country of Djibouti, the region was fast becoming a theater of operations for […]