Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem

The irony of Africa being a very rich continent but Africans being some of the poorest peoples in the world is no longer lost on anyone.

I was in Khartoum a couple of weeks ago. A sweltering heat of over 40 degrees welcomed us as we descended the gangway from a Matatu-like Kenya Airways flight from Nairobi.

It is difficult to persuade Kenyans, exasperated by the shenanigans of their Grand Coalition – which many regard as the Grand Confusion – government, that there is anything good in electoral democracy.

If you read the Kenyan and Ugandan papers or monitor other regional media it would be understandable if you conclude that both countries are about to go to war over a disputed island that is about the size of half of a standard football field, with little room for supporters to watch a match even

Sometime ago I was a keynote speaker at an international conference jointly hosted by two leading policy thinktanks on the African continent, the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) and the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA).

The focus of many International Women’s Day activities this year was on ending violence against women.

The United Nations Millennium Campaign is launching a report this week on maternal mortality to coincide with International Women’s Day on 8 March.

President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela’s recent referendum victory to change the constitution of his country to allow all elected public officials – including the president – to stand for more than two terms is both a blow for and against democracy.

The leader and our brother Colonel Muammar al-Gaddafi has just been elected chairperson of the African Union.