Africa:
ambia's leader Levy Mwanawasa, 59, has died in a Paris hospital after suffering a stroke in June. Vice-President Rupiah Banda, who is expected to take over as acting leader, made the announcement on state TV. President Mwanawasa suffered a stroke at an African Union summit...
Posted on August 19, 2008 3:43 AM • 0 Comments •
A remarkable find in North Africa is reported in PLoS. Information has just been released on this new archaeological site in a formerly much greener Sahara. This will provide an interesting physical unerpinning for the recent work on a "Genetic Map of Europe" (see this...
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Posted on August 14, 2008 1:03 PM • 4 Comments •
Nigeria is where Western graduate students in political science who study corruption go to do their fieldwork. There appears to be an ensconced elite and externally connected ruling body and a down trodden underclass organized into various resistance groups. The discovery of abundant petroleum reserves in the Niger Delta and vicinity meant that the elite ruling group and external forces (including but not limited to Big Oil) have conspired to extract this resource at maximum profit largely setting aside the possibility of in situ development and long term improvement in areas of education, health care, infrastructure, and so on for actual Nigerians.
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Posted on July 26, 2008 1:53 PM • 10 Comments •
Wild game is good. More wild game and fewer cattle, in some habitats, would better. But when wild game is extracted en masse from a wild area (usually a rain forest, usually in Africa) and shipped to a city, or an enclave of logger's camps,...
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Posted on July 10, 2008 10:58 PM • 1 Comments •
This article in PLoS Medicine investigates the difference between modern multi-drug treatment with individuals monitoring of patients in a developed country (Switzerland) with similar treatments using a different, non-individualized "public health" approach in South Africa, to see if there is any difference between the two...
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Posted on July 10, 2008 7:49 AM • 3 Comments •
A trip overseas, especially with today's fuel prices and other changes in the airline industry, is different now than it was even a few years ago. This is especially true in regards to the topic of this post: How to deal with the problem of...
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Posted on July 1, 2008 11:42 AM • 21 Comments •
Join Zuska and her commenters in a pile on regarding the Smithsonian Magazine's recent article on the archaeology of southern Africa. It's racist, it's sexist, and it's even anti-Neanderthal. (The article, not Zuska's post) Regarding the writing about the use of stone tool technology in...
Posted on June 26, 2008 8:52 PM • 5 Comments •
Well, now it's official. The leader of Zimbabwe is an out of control nut-job who will probably linger in office until very slow moving pressures from outside push him out, or until there is a bloody coup of some kind. This comes after his opposition...
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Posted on June 20, 2008 11:47 PM • 10 Comments •
Do you have any idea of what is going on in Zimbabwe? And has been for quite some time? I've not chosen to make any effort to note the African news that I semi-regularly follow, but I think it is time for that to change....
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Posted on June 19, 2008 10:40 AM • 5 Comments •
In the early days of South Africa ... well, not the really early days, but some time in the 19th century or early 20th century, a fairly large number of Chines people were imported as workers/slaves. One of the reasons to do this was to...
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Posted on June 18, 2008 5:12 PM • 11 Comments •
