Lara Pawson

'What does it take,' an Angolan political activist asked me recently, 'to get the BBC interested in what we are trying to do?' He was referring to a series of demonstrations that have been taking place in the Angolan capital Luanda since the 7 March this year.

Riots, royal weddings and recession. We have been here before. In 1981, when unemployment was at its highest level in nearly half a century and state racism was rife, a riot erupted in Brixton, south London, sparked by the death of a black teenager in police custody.

Duncan Clarke is quite right: thanks to impressive oil deposits there exists today ‘an Afrique utile’.