Washington and Sudan’s elections: When interests collide

The talk of the town for Sudanese is the position of Washington’s envoy Scott Gration after he met the National Elections Commission, the body accused of irregularities and bias towards the ruling National Congress Party.     “They have given me a lot of information that gives me confidence that the elections will start on time and that they will be as free and fair as possible,” Gration told reporters.

“This has been a difficult challenge but I believe they (the NEC) have stepped up and met the challenge,” he added.

Gration refused to answer a question on his opinion of the accusations of fraud and bias against the NEC, presiding over the polls to begin next week.

These include the NEC imposing restrictions on political party meetings, pre-recording and censoring political party broadcasts, intervening in the U.N. tender process to allow the government printing press to print the presidential and gubernatorial ballots and a later revelation they allowed the same press to print the voter registration books and slips.

Should Africa scuttle Copenhagen deal?

Africa has known for a long time that it’s not going to get everything it wants from the Copenhagen climate talks. Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, who is representing the continent in Denmark, has been managing expectations by saying so for more than six months now.

But that realism is tempered by increasingly tough words from a man who has already said European emissions may have caused his country’s infamous 1984 famine.

Meles arrives in Copenhagen today having threatened to enlist the help of China and India to “scuttle” any deal he’s not satisfied with.

“If Copenhagen is going to be about an agreement that simply rides roughshod over Africa, then we will try to scuttle it, and I think we have reasonable assurance we can scuttle it if our concerns are not addressed,” Meles told reporters in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa on Friday.

Is the new U.S. policy on Sudan the dawn of a new era of engagement with Khartoum?

from Global News Journal:

Does Obama deserve the Nobel Peace Prize?

U.S. President Barack Obama has won the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize. The Norwegian Nobel Committee said Obama had been awarded the prize for his calls to reduce the world's stockpiles of nuclear weapons and work towards restarting the stalled Middle East peace process.

The committee praised Obama for "his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples."

"Very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world's attention and given its people hope for a better future."

The laureate wins a gold medal, a diploma and 10 million Swedish crowns (1.4 million dollars or 878,000 pounds).

China shunts U.S. into second place in Scramble for Africa

A presidential visit followed by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s African tour cannot conceal a stark reality: China has overtaken the United States as Africa’s top trading partner.

That is one of the main problems facing Clinton on a seven-nation jaunt meant variously to spread Washington’s good governance message and shore up relationships with its key oil suppliers on the continent.         

Is Obama Africa’s saviour?

Africa is rich in natural resources like oil, gold, diamonds, platinum and yet millions of African people live in abject poverty. The global economic and climate crisis have made life even harder.

At the recent G8 meeting in Italy, African leaders and members of civil society voiced concerns over the promises made in previous G8 meetings of aid and assistance that have yet to materialise.

from The Great Debate UK:

Squandered oil wealth, an African tragedy

-Arvind Ganesan is the Director of the Business and Human Rights Program at Human Rights Watch. The opinions expressed are his own.-

Equatorial Guinea is a tiny country of about half a million people on the west coast of Africa, but is the fourth-largest oil producer in sub-Saharan Africa.

Most of the investment in the country’s multi-billion dollar oil industry comes from the United States. ExxonMobil, Hess and Marathon are all there. Right now, the U.S. imports up to 100,000 barrels of oil a day from Equatorial Guinea, or about a quarter of the country’s oil production.

Oil money gives the country the means to be a model for development and human rights. The economy is nearly 130 times as big as it was when oil was discovered in 1995. But as a report released by Human Rights Watch today details, the government has squandered or stolen much of the money at the expense of its people.

Is Obama Snubbing Kenya on Africa trip?

President Barack Obama’s choice of Ghana for his first visit to sub-Saharan Africa since taking office has stirred debate in his father’s homeland Kenya.

Some Kenyans believe Obama ought to have come “home” first. Others, especially among critics of President Mwai Kibaki’s government, say he has deliberately shunned the country to show U.S. disapproval of rampant corruption and nepotism in political circles here.

Prime Minister Raila Odinga, who comes from the Luo ethnic group like Obama’s father, said it was wrong to read too much into Obama’s itinerary, given that neither was he visiting other influential nations in the region like South Africa and Nigeria.

“Ghana is symbolic. It was the first African country to gain independence from Britain in 1957. Ghana is very advanced in its transition to democratic form of governance. So it is perfectly logical,” he told Reuters.

Why was Edwin Dyer killed?

Edwin Dyer was among a group of Western tourists kidnapped on the Niger-Mali border after attending a festival of Tuareg culture in late January.

Four months later the Briton was killed by al Qaeda’s North African wing, which had been demanding the release of Abu Qatada, a Jordanian Islamist being held in Britain.

Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb said Dyer’s death was “a tiny portion of what innocent Muslims taste every day at the hands of the Crusader and Jewish coalition”.

Although Dyer was killed on May 31, news of his death was not released until June 3, a day before President Barack Obama gave a speech in Cairo intended to mend fences with the Muslim world.

Western Sahara poser for UN

Morocco serves as the backdrop for such Hollywood blockbusters as Gladiator, Black Hawk Down and Body of Lies. The country’s breathtaking landscapes and gritty urban neighbourhoods are the perfect setting for Hollywood’s imagination.

Unbeknown to most filmgoers, however, is that Morocco is embroiled in one of Africa’s oldest conflicts – the dispute over Western Sahara. This month the UN Security Council is expected to take up the dispute once more, providing US President Barack Obama with an opportunity to assert genuine leadership in resolving this conflict. But there’s no sign that the new administration is paying adequate attention.

The story of Western Sahara would make quite a movie. There was high diplomatic intrigue when Moroccan troops occupied the territory, after Spain abandoned its long-time colony as Generalissimo Franco lay dying in 1975. The subsequent war between Morocco and the Algerian-supported Polisario Front, which sought Western Saharan independence, furnished plenty of action sequences in the desert. There is also the real human tragedy of the Western Saharan refugees, who have languished in exile for more than three decades.