Features

The 13 November bombings and shootings in Paris murdered 129 innocent people. Many of them in their twenties and thirties, they happened to be attending a rock concert, eating out in a lively neighbourhood, watching football in a sports bar or just walking by.

Elie Wiesel, the Holocaust survivor and Nobel Peace Prize laureate said, “There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest.” I would add, “There must never be a time when we fail to protest the madness of politician wannabes and

I received a message from one of my friends in Lebanon who asked with feigned curiosity why the U.S. media only gave a passing reference to the bombing in Beirut before turning to non-stop coverage of the attacks in Paris.

Civilians in Paris have been killed because of these imperial drives for power, just as tens, hundreds of millions before them have been killed in the past.

I used to hop across the road and bring her home from school.

We would have lunch together.

I enthused her so much about Ghanaian food that on the first occasion she visited Ghana and she was asked by the hotel staff what she wanted for breakfast, she replied: “Fufu and soup!”

The video begins mid-action. A Black man sprawls on the ground. He seems injured. He tries to move but his efforts are slow, labored, slight. There is blood beneath him, fresh and bright against the polished white floor. On the edge of the frame, people move frantically.

A gathering of African leaders and European Union (EU) member-states in Malta has resulted in a proposed financial package of nearly $US4 billion which will ostensibly be utilized to halt the flow of migration from Africa to Europe.

Development projects, by their very nature, will always contain uncertainties and risks – factors and circumstances not ascertained or anticipated, elements subject to change or fluctuation, imponderables that may defy the best of planning and project preparation.

‘I couldn’t stop the blood. It was coming out of his head like a broken tap. I put my hand over it but it just wouldn’t stop.’

INTRODUCTION