The perilous political playground in Mali is complicated; but it’s explicable
Harvey Glickman
The recent coup in Mali not only revealed the fragility of African electoral democracies—something of a trend in recent years after decades of instability and military rule—but it also exposed a kind of domino effect of the North African “Arab spring” in the countries of “the Sahel,” just south, west to east, straddling the Sahara desert.
Amidst recent security setbacks in the continent of Africa, one forum attempts to find homemade solutions
Selahadin Eshetu
In connection with the celebration of the first anniversary of the building of the Grand Millennium Dam over the Blue Nile, Ethiopians were given a rare opportunity to phone in and ask questions of their likings to their Prime Minister, Meles Zenawi. One caller asked the Prime Minister if he knew the exact source of the Nile River, a river that continued to be a source of tense political tone between riparian countries. The Prime Minister replied “yes, but since there are several claims of places as a source of Nile river, it is better to consider Lake Tana as a source of the [Blue] Nile River.”
With a population estimated at 85 million Ethiopia is the second most populous in the continent next to Nigeria, and a recent forecast by the Economist Intelligence Unit declared its economy is the third fastest growing next only to that of India and China. Ethiopia’s controversial annual GDP growth stands anywhere between 7% – 11%, (depending on which report is one reading) with forecasters of the later predicting it to continue for the next five years, in which case Ethiopia could even prevail over China and India to become the world’s number one fastest growing economy.
