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Exactly how bad has the first half of this month been for the UN? Where does one start? You could choose Burma, where the international organization’s ability to deliver aid in a hostile climate has been hurled into doubt. Or Sudan, where Darfuri rebels sallied forth to attack Khartoum, demonstrating exactly what [...]

A new study published in Science claims that funds for HIV prevention (like most funds directed at Africa, cynics might argue) are being wasted. Telling people to use condoms doesn’t work, they say; asking them not to have sex is religion-inspired lunacy; testing for HIV has had little impact so far (although forthcoming research on [...]

Is the lack of fresh water a catalyst for conflict? The scenario has become fashionable of late, with Ban Ki-moon pondering such a future earlier this year, while John Reid made a great song and dance of it when he was Defence Secretary (perhaps he even did a rain dance). But it seems, according to [...]

What are the connections between climate change and migration? Not as obvious as one might think… one of the conversations we’ve been having in the coffee break is the lack of hard evidence when it comes to the relationship(s) between development, conflict, and climate change and the increasing difficulty to demonstrate cause and effect. Rhetorically [...]

England football manager Fabio Capello went on an unusual overseas tour earlier this month. His destination? Maseru in Lesotho, where he visited an HIV testing centre. What was really unusual, however, was the ingenious method the centre used to grab the saturnine coach’s attention. They sat him in a room with a 14-year-old boy who [...]

The Conservative foreign affairs spokesman William Hague issued a press release on Tuesday calling on David Miliband, foreign secretary “to take urgent action with regard to the Chinese ship, currently heading to Uganda carrying arms bound for Zimbabwe”.
From the FT blog:
Hague’s intervention sent the Foreign Office into a spin, as officials pored over atlases trying [...]

Later in the week half of the European Commission will go to Beijing. Playing Kissinger to EU President Barroso’s Nixon, Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson has prepared the way for his boss with a thoughtful speech to the China-Britain Business Council.
Instead of boycotting the Olympics, Mandelson argues that China should be treated with respect - but [...]

While the EU is still recovering from its series of set-backs in Chad over the last two months, it’s been hit by bad news from an earlier mission.  In 2003, the French led the EU’s first African venture, Operation Artemis, into the DR Congo to bail out beleaguered UN troops.  This has usually been hailed [...]

A useful travel guide for would-be migrants, from Foreign Policy magazine. My only quibble would be their listing of Spain as one of the best countries to migrate to. This might be true if you’re a retired Brit with a fondness for sherry or cheap wine, but it will be interesting to see how tolerance [...]

A few weeks back the Guardian noted the transformation of Guinea-Bissau, a tiny, jungly and desperately poor country on the tip of West Africa, into the world’s first “narco-state.” Presumably this phrase means that its economy relies on drugs, though it has never been clearly defined and Guatemala and Afghanistan have also laid claim to [...]

For over a year, one of the biggest questions among officials in UN-land has been: will the Security Council make us go to Somalia?  Back in November, I debuted on this blog by noting that Ban Ki-moon had announced that a mission was not “a realistic and viable option.”  Well, the Council didn’t like that one bit, [...]

Interesting to read the argument made today that China’s overseas diplomacy has in some cases - like Sudan - been “hijacked” by state-owned companies like PetroChina, that are alleged to have become “very powerful interest groups” in their own right.
Very interesting to see who’s making it: scholars at “leading Chinese think-tanks and universities in Beijing“, [...]

Just after making light of incidents on Kosovo’s periphery below, I’ve been alerted to much nastier events on the Chad/Darfur border.  An French EU soldier has been killed and another wounded, having strayed into Sudan (I’m sure there are already conspiracy theories out there about how this happened, but let’s not pursue them).  As if this [...]

“If you see people throwing stones, it means if they had guns, they would have been shooting”, observes Frederick, an economics grad who drives a motorcycle taxi in Douala, Cameroon. 
The FT’s Matthew Green explains:
Only a few crumbs were left on the counter at the Boulangerie du Rail delicatessen in Douala after looters swept the shelves [...]

Lots of concerns lately about stagflation, given how commodity prices have continued their inexorable rise even as the US economy falters.  Inevitably, some have wondered whether it means it’s the 1970s all over again. But here’s another reason to think about dusting off those flares: what about the risk of a new third world debt [...]

John Githingo - Kenya’s crusading anti-corruption champion, who was permanent secretary in charge of governance and ethics until he had to flee to the UK in 2005 - offers a succint analysis of how aid donors have contributed to instability in Kenya:
To many in the west confronted with images of machete-wielding Africans, what has happened [...]

Shashank Bengali, a journo based in Nairobi, was looking for a mechanic the other day.  He asked Thomas, his office’s driver, who replied: “There is a man. He’s a Kikuyu, but he’s a good man.”  Bengali wonders,
A few months ago, would Thomas, a Luhya (and a Raila Odinga supporter), have prefaced his endorsement with “he’s [...]

The FT’s consumer industries correspondent, Jenny Wiggins - who along with commodities correspondent Javier Blas deserves a medal (or at the very least a rise) for excellence in covering the food prices story over the last year - is looking at changing patterns of food consumption in India in the paper’s Saturday magazine today.  The [...]

Following on from my post last week on Kenya’s bolt from the blue, which quoted Richard Dowden extensively, here’s a link to an excellent piece he had in yesterday’s Observer.  A taster:
Anyone who expressed shock at the recent violence in such a ’stable’ country clearly knows nothing about Kenya. The British government was caught completely [...]

With the death count now well into the hundreds, and the number of Internally Displaced People from the Rift Valley alone placed at 70,000 by the Kenyan Red Cross, decision-makers at aid agencies must be wondering whether they’re hallucinating.  As Richard Dowden quotes a Kenyan friend: “But these things don’t happen in Kenya!”.
As if to [...]

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