Rick van der Ploeg & Samuel Wills
Kenya has been exporting energy for years – in the form of some of the world’s fastest long-distance runners. But Kenya will soon be exporting another, far more profitable kind of energy, as it taps into a string of recently discovered oil fields in its 450-mile-long section of the Great Rift Valley, a fissure in the earth’s crust that runs from Lebanon to Mozambique.
South Sudan has once again managed to keep the world on the edge of its seat. But Ethiopia has more reasons to be nervous
Tsedale Lemma
The world’s newest country is in turmoil. It started on Dec. 15th 2013, when President Salva Kirr claimed to have foiled a coup attempt orchestrated by his former deputy Riek Machar, who was sacked by the president in July. Four days later, on Dec. 19th, the International Crisis Group (ICG) said South Sudan was “arguably on the cusp of a civil war.” “Too much has been invested in South Sudan since its independence in July 2011 for it to fail so soon,” ICG said.
Evan Cinq-Mars
In a December 1998 report to the United NationsSecurity Council, former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan happily reflected on a crisis in Africa where the world body had done well. A UN peacekeeping operation had taken over from an African-led, French-supported force, and contributed to the stabilization of a dire political and security situation in the Central African Republic (CAR). “As a result of the involvement of the United Nations,” the Secretary-General extolled, “the Central African Republic has become an island of relative stability in an otherwise war-torn region.”
