Africa Rising 21st Century

            The entire world is consumed by news and discussion of COVID-19.   It has killed millions of people and made many more millions sick, some critically so.   However, COVID has crowded out discussion and action on many other deadly diseases, not the least of which is the human immunodeficiency virus/acquired immune deficiency syndrome ( HIV/AIDS).   Because it is not discussed as much as in the past, some may think it is completely under control.   Unfortunately, it is not, and the millions of refugee situations worldwide make it even more problematic, nowhere more so than in Africa. Last year, Africa saw the most new internal displacements as conflict and violence flared in several countries across the continent. Millions of new displacements were recorded in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Central African Republic, South Sudan and Nigeria, triggered by i...

              Russia has been involved with Africa for decades – militarily and economically.   The current crisis concerning Russia’s unprovoked invasion of neighboring Ukraine has revealed just how complicated Russia’s relationship with African countries really is.             Observers were no doubt surprised to find so many Africans living in Ukraine when the Russians invaded.   In fact, almost 20% of the foreign students studying in Ukraine were African according to a 2020 count.   The African countries with the most students in Ukraine are Morocco (8,000), Nigeria (4,000) and Egypt (3,500).   Ghana’s government initially told its 1,000 students to shelter in place, while the Nigerian government said it would try to facilitate the evacuation of all its students who wanted to leave Ukraine.         ...

              In 2013, Poly-GCL Petroleum Group, a partnership between China Poly and closely held Hong Kong-based Golden Concord Group Ltd., signed five production-sharing agreements with Ethiopia to explore for oil and gas in the country’s Ogaden region.   The Chinese company has been involved in the exploration and development project in the Ogaden basin since the end of 2013 and has confirmed new hydrocarbon deposits, which means that Ethiopia could have more oil and gas than previously thought.   Unfortunately, this economic boon appears to come at the cost of lives and health of Ethiopians experiencing a wave of mysterious illnesses in the area around the exploration sites.             Poly-GCL has identified other reserves in the Calub deposit alone that were initially thought to be 133 billion cubic meters. However, the quantity could exceed 200 billion ...

              While the world is focused on impending war sparked by Russian imperial dreams in eastern Europe, Vladimir Putin has his eyes set on Africa, and his aims are not to develop the continent’s economies and its people, but rather to get all he can from it.             After the Soviet Union fell apart in the early 1990s, Russia pulled back from Africa for a while, but like China’s Xi Jinping, Russia’s Vladimir Putin never lost sight of what Africa and its member states offered on many levels.   Gradually, Russia worked its way back to partnerships on the continent different from what it had offered in the past in many ways.   For example, this time Russia was not outwardly pushing a Cold War competition and ideological recruitment per se.   However, Putin and his government did favorably compare its more pragmatic aims in its African partnerships ...