Africa Policy Journal

By Guido van Garderen Revised for the Harvard Africa Journal. September, 2013. Abstract Liberia is still tainted by images of war and poverty, even though the country has been at peace for over a decade under the leadership of President Johnson-Sirleaf. The current brand image deters tourists, business executives and potential investors from visiting the country. […]

Jeffrey Sachs has a goal:  to end poverty in Africa by 2025, and according to Nina Munk, he is convinced that this can be done. Yet Munk’s account of what has come of the Millennium Village Projects, (Sachs’s brain child) tells of yet another foreign intervention in Africa that has left a lot to be desired, (at […]

After presiding over economic decline marked by hyperinflation which brought Zimbabwe to its knees, president Mugabe and his Zimbabwe African National Union – Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) party have emerged as victors in the recent harmonized elections in Zimbabwe. Mugabe got 61% of the vote and his ZANU-PF party won 158 of the 210 parliament seats, giving […]

There is an ongoing campaign of terror in Nigeria. Since July 2009, Boko Haram, an extremist jihadist group from northern Nigeria, has killed over 3,500 people in the wake of an Islamic insurgency, with the death toll rising almost on a daily basis. The group has carried out frequent gun attacks and bombings, in some […]

I recently read Dambisa Moyo’s Winner Take All: China’s Race for Resources and What it Means for the World. The book is a thorough review of the resource landscape – from water to land to energy, and what China’s drive to acquire these means for the West and the developing world including Africa. Moyo conducts due diligence on […]

Abstract This article examines regulatory policy of cryptography in Africa. Some consider public availability of strong cryptography to be a civil right. Whether used to protect sensitive information or verify identities, individuals and corporations alike benefit from cryptographic software in a world that is becoming increasingly networked. By the same token, users of cryptography might commit […]

The development challenges for contemporary democratic states of Africa are enormous. This somewhat sweeping phrase takes for granted the question of whether those countries claiming to be democratic are so in organisation and practice. For instance, only Mauritius was categorised as full democracy out of 44 sub-Saharan African countries evaluated in Democracy Index, 2010; 8 […]

Abstract  Despite the peace agreements and disarmament processes implemented since the 1990s, conflict in Mali has proven to be resilient. Conflict symptoms pertaining to deficient governance and sustained societal discontent have recurrently generated armed violence. This paper will explore the multifarious factors that have continually undermined the political stability and integrity of the Malian state. […]

In 2009, a group of academics, policy makers, and industry professionals came together and created the Desertec Industrial Initiative (DII) and the DESERTEC Foundation with the goal of meeting 15% of Europe’s electricity needs and two thirds of the Middle East and North Africa’s electricity needs with renewable power generated in the deserts of northern […]

Meet America’s new ally in Africa. With 16 million people, a per capita income of $360 (PPP),52,875 refugees, and dysfunctional neighbors, Niger seems less than the ideal partner in the growing U.S. strategic footprint in Africa, but its geographic location places it at the frontlines.Landlocked between the hotbed of Mali and the oil basin in […]

 Introduction Sierra Leone is consistently ranked among the countries with the highest maternal mortality ratio (970 per 100,000) and women in Sierra Leone have a 1 in 21 lifetime risk of dying as a result of pregnancy.  Despite some progress, Sierra Leone still ranks 5th in the world for countries with the highest under-five mortality […]

On July 09, 2012, the Republic of South Sudan celebrated its first year anniversary. The previous year, on November 11, 2011, it submitted an application to formally join the East African Community (EAC), a regional organization consisting of Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda, and Tanzania. South Sudan, a landlocked country in East Africa, emerged from four […]