By Charles Mafa*
IDN-InDepth NewsReport
LUSAKA (IDN) – China’s voracious appetite for natural resources has driven a boom of investments and aid to African countries. In the Southern African country of Zambia, Chinese companies are building roads, hospitals, sports stadia as well as reviving copper mines abandoned in the country’s Copperbelt region.
By Jen Alic of Oilprice.com*
IDN-InDepth NewsViewpoint
WASHINGTON DC (IDN) – People often ask me why the West doesn’t attempt a Libya-style intervention in Syria. After all, things are going so well in Libya. Oil production is up. But oil production is merely a mirage, as is security in Libya, which was doomed from the day one PG (post-Gaddafi) because of the way it was “liberated”.
Last Wednesday (September 12), US envoy to Libya Christopher Stevens was killed along with three other American diplomats in a rocket attack on the US consulate in Benghazi.
By Ernest Corea*
IDN-InDepth NewsAnalysis
WASHINGTON (IDN) – Eleven years after the murderous events that made “nine-eleven” an universally recognized description of a date of tragedy, another 9/11 has seen actions that caused destruction, public commotion and tragic loss of lives.
This year’s disturbances which began in Egypt and Libya took the form of violent demonstrations directed at American diplomatic staff and institutions. The demonstrations have spread across a wide swath of countries – at least a dozen according to some reports – in Africa and Asia.
By Richard Johnson
IDN-InDepth NewsReport
LONDON (IDN) – Despite widespread scepticism about nuclear energy in the aftermath of Fukushima disaster, Poland, which is heavily dependent on coal and imported gas, has decided to go in for its first nuclear power plant.
The move comes some three decades after the the Council of Ministers passed a decree in January 1982 on the construction of the Żarnowiec Nuclear Power Plant, which would have been the first in the country. But due to changes in the economic and political situation in Poland after 1989, as well as public protests in the late 1980s and early ’90s which escalated in the wake of the Chernobyl disaster, the construction was cancelled.
By Eric Walberg*
IDN-InDepth NewsViewpoint
TORONTO (IDN) – The world is living through a veritable slow-motion earthquake. If things go according to plan, the US obsession with Afghanistan and Iraq will soon be one of those ugly historical disfigurements that — at least for most Americans — will disappear into the memory hole.
By Devinder Kumar
IDN-InDepth NewsReport
NEW DELHI (IDN) – Human Rights Watch has expressed concern about increasing violence against the minority Shia Muslim community in Pakistan and asked the government in Islamabad to protect it from sectarian attacks by Sunni militant groups.
“Deadly attacks on Shia communities across Pakistan are escalating,” HRW’s Asia director Brad Adams said. “The government’s persistent failure to apprehend attackers or prosecute the extremist groups organizing the attacks suggests that it is indifferent to this carnage,” he added.
By Sven Richter*
IDN-InDepth NewsAnalysis
African demographics are at the start of a long-term trend that will most likely trigger high gross domestic product (GDP) growth in the region for the next decade or two. A by-product of this is likely to be more democracy. Studies show that as GDP increases, the likelihood of democracies becoming autocracies fades and the likelihood of autocracies becoming democracies increases. This holds true for all nations, bar those with a very high GDP per capita where the wealth is derived from a single resource such as oil.
By Chiara Francavilla*
IDN-InDepth NewsAnalysis
While Somalia relies on the World Food Programme to deliver food to the area, the country on the Horn of Africa continues to export livestock to neighbouring states. This may seem baffling. But the situation underlines that one needs to look beyond food availability itself to understand hunger caused by food shortages.
By Bernhard Schell
IDN-InDepth NewsReport
GENEVA (IDN) – Libya’s new rulers have been warmly welcomed into the fold of the United Nations in the wake of obtaining diplomatic recognition from about 90 countries – even as fighting continues southeast of Tripoli in Sirte, one of the last remaining strongholds of the so-called “King of Kings of Africa”.
By Jaya Ramachandran
IDN-InDepth NewsAnalysis
BRUSSELS (IDN) – Hardly one year after the election of Alpha Condé as President of Guinea, the West African state is faced with a rather vulnerable situation that political analysts fear may open the army’s way back to power.
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