Mahmood Mamdani:   Reflecting on the context behind South Sudan's exercise in self-determination and the potential sources of political violence following the country’s independence, Mahmood Mamdani explores Sudan's longer-term historical experience – the role of imposed administrative identities under the colonial system, migration, religion, slavery and the emergence of a politicised Islam – and the contemporary challenges around rethinking political citizenship.  Read More…

The continent's autocrats must recognise that time is running out for despotism.   See African One-Man Rule Table & the rank of Meles Zenawe

Dev Kar: …the top ten exporters of illicit capital during the period 1990-2008 are Bangladesh (cumulative outflow US$34.8 billion), Angola (US$34.0 billion), Lesotho (US$16.8 billion), Chad (US$15.4 billion), Yemen (US$12.0 billion), Nepal (US$9.1 billion), Uganda (US$8.8 billion), Myanmar (US$8.5 billion), Ethiopia (US$8.4 billion), Zambia (US$6.8 billion) and Sudan at US$6.7 billion.  Read More…

Questions to Girma Kassa

AHN:  A driver working for UN’s World Food Program was gunned down and another staff injured by unknown gunmen in Somali region in eastern Ethiopia, UN food agency said Saturday.  (This is the second deadly attack on a WFP humanitarian worker in less than a month to take place in the region.)  Read More…

By Hama Tuma:  Back in 2006, I wrote a short story called The Case of the Criminal Walk in which I lampooned the Meles Zenawi regime’s ridiculous ethnic Bantustanization of Ethiopia. In the story, a man who had walked outside of “his region” was accused of being a criminal and a saboteur.  Read More…