Staffan I. Lindberg (Florida): The Demand Side of Politics in Africa. From the latest issue of the Journal of Third World Studies, Clair Apodaca (FIU): Do Global Strategies for Poverty Eradication in Sub-Saharan Africa Work? An Assessment of Several International Macroeconomic Policies; and Johannes L van der Walt (NWU): Ubuntugogy for the 21st Century. Eric Reeves on the three biggest security threats to newly independent South Sudan. A shrinking continent: It’s becoming much easier to fly within Africa, writes Xan Rice as he visits the world’s newest nation. While there are many segments yet to be completed, the huge continent of Africa is at least partially linked by a series of highways known collectively as the Trans-African Highway Network. With Africa's farmlands threatened by an enemy more pernicious than any Mongolian horde, Senegal is leading a 12-nation cooperative effort to erect a living defense system aptly named the Great Green Wall of Africa. Anthropologist I.M. Lewis discusses the background to the famine in Somalia. Somalis, in growing numbers, are dying of famine after the severest of droughts — they are also the casualties of the conflict between al-Shabab and Somalia’s transitional government. More cash and less food aid is what Somalians need. Where are the African carmakers? A whole continent sells its raw materials but produces less than 1% of the world's manufactured goods. A forgotten African Catholic kingdom: A year before Columbus discovered America, the king of Kongo led his people to Christianity. Paul Kagame's Rwanda: Can the African nation have peace and prosperity without freedom? A review of Dancing in the Glory of Monsters: The Collapse of the Congo and the Great War of Africa by Jason Stearns (and more). South Africans believed the World Cup would bump their country into the first world — so did it?
