Africa Archive

WASHINGTON — Blame the sign, or the sumptuous location in the heart of what the world’s diplomatic capital calls “embassy row.” The affair, held on a freezing afternoon in late January, certainly had draw. More than two dozen people, nearly all men and nearly all somewhat dodgy looking in that classic discrete-agent-of-a-foreign-government sort of way, gathered to bid on a hulking, neglected row-house boasting a fabulously curious sign: “BANK AUCTION, FORMER LIBIAN EMBASSY.”<<ad>>Any auction is bound to make the heart beat fast, regardless of whether the crowd features shady characters from various diplomatic outposts. But when they do drop in […]

HARBEL, Liberia — White latex oozed from the vein of the rubber tree, dripping into a small plastic bucket. Saa Morris, an illiterate 48 year old and father of nine, used his knife-edged pole to slice into the vein. Then the “tapper” moved on to another tree on one of the world’s largest rubber plantations, owned by American tire maker Firestone. By his own account, Morris taps no less than 750 trees in a day and sometimes as many as 903. That earns him his daily wage of $3.30. “We doing hard work in the bush here, but no good […]

CAPE TOWN, South Africa — South Africa has an enviable reputation as a tourism destination. Beautiful scenery and beaches combine with spectacular game reserves, high-quality hotels and a cheap currency to ensure a steadily increasing stream of visitors. But its reputation isn’t all good. Ask people outside the country what they know of South Africa and the word “crime” is seldom far away. And if the perception internationally is of a country where crime is out of control, the local feeling is equally bleak. South African citizens are angry at what they see as soaring levels of crime — much […]

Nigeria is preparing for elections in April that it hopes will burnish its reputation as a democratic, diplomatic and economic leader on the continent, able to handle the multitude of ethnic, religious and class tensions that threaten Africa’s most populous nation and its place as the world’s sixth largest producer of oil. But in promoting an obscure northern governor as his successor and using Nigeria’s anti-graft commission as a weapon against political rivals, outgoing President Olusegun Obasanjo may be tarnishing both his legacy and the country’s progress, underscoring the perception of Nigeria as the world’s reigning kleptocracy and risking an […]

MONROVIA, Liberia — To Liberians, she is President Ellen, or “our iron lady.” Her supporters call her a difference-maker and a straight talker, a leader who says what she’s going to do and then does it. Those qualities have inspired admiration and even love for President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Africa’s first female president. “She love the country,” Roland Watson, a driver for an aid agency, said. “I think she want to make things happen in this country.” The same cannot be said about Liberia’s former presidents, who presided over 14 years of civil war that claimed 250,000 lives and impoverished […]

When Joe Mason’s 10-year-old daughter saw electricity for the first time in her life, she danced. The years of war, 1989 to 2003, ruined the public power supply in this capital. Liberians with means relied on generators; those without money, however, lived in the dark. Given her father earns $90 a month as a hotel clerk, Mason’s daughter could not have known what electricity was until President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf turned it on in July 2006, illuminating the lamps on Monrovia’s major streets. “A new day,” Mason said. But more than six months later, the electricity that powers those lights […]