Just a final word at the end of a turbulent day on the assassination of Guinea-Bissau's two most powerful men, the President Joao Bernardo Vieira and the army...
Mark Weston
Mark Weston is a writer, researcher and consultant working on public health, justice, youth employability and other global issues. He lives in Sudan, and is the author of two books on Africa – The Ringtone and the Drum and African Beauty.
Joao Bernardo Vieira – a turbulent life in a turbulent country
The life of Joao Bernardo Vieira, the President of Guinea-Bissau who was assassinated this morning, was a microcosm of the post-independence history of his...
Drugs and death in Guinea-Bissau
My forthcoming article in EMEA Finance magazine on how the assassination of Vieira is likely to be linked to the cocaine trade that has swamped Guinea-Bissau:...
Guinea-Bissau’s president assassinated
Shocking news from Guinea-Bissau, where president Joao Bernardo Vieira and his army's chief-of-staff have both been assassinated. The two men were thought to...
More reasons to be cheerful
While we're on the subject of climate change misery (see the two posts below), an interesting finding in Raymond Fisman and Eduardo Miguel's 'Economic...
Tough at the top
The UN has just published an update to its Human Development Index (HDI), the league table that compares living standards in all the world's countries. At the...
The Dangerous Demographics of West Africa
I gave a talk to senior civil servants at the Home Office last week, as part of Demos's Leadership Masterclass on International Challenges and...
AFRICOM: “Throwing a rock at a hive of bees”
The US's new Africa Command (AFRICOM) has made a promising start: its strategic advice to the Ugandan army for its recent offensive against the Lord's...
Buchanan’s mag calls me a Nazi and a racist!
Pat Buchanan's American Conservative magazine has taken issue with my posts on using cash incentives to prevent HIV infection. The idea of giving people money...
More on cash incentives for AIDS prevention
Last May I wrote about a World Bank scheme to pay Tanzanians to test negative for sexually transmitted infections (a proxy for HIV/AIDS), and about the...
John Robb on resilience
A few weeks back I interviewed John Robb, the military futurist and author of 'Brave New War.' We discussed the irruption of Latin American drug gangs into...
The case for piracy
As the US responds to Somali piracy the only way it knows how - through force - Johann Hari in the Independent reveals that it is not just illegal foreign...
Deadlock in Ghana
One of Africa's few shining lights, Ghana, is on tenterhooks as it awaits the result of an incredibly closely-fought general election. Publication of the...
The Indian Ocean bubble
Somalia's piracy is not just good news for the pirates themselves. Whole industries are springing up or expanding to take advantage of the bonanza. In the...
Piracy or taxation?
In a short but fascinating interview with the Guardian, a Somali pirate explains how he began his career: I started to hijack these fishing boats in 1998. I...
Thabo Mbeki: guilty of manslaughter
Manslaughter: The unlawful killing of a human being without malice aforethought (Oxford English Dictionary). Some commentators think Thabo Mbeki's decision...
Piracy catches on
The piracy fad may be spreading around the African coast. Last week a Chinese fishing boat was attacked off the coast of Sierra Leone in West Africa. The...
The climate can wait
Today, the UK Government's Committee on Climate Change will release a 500-page report telling us all we need to slash our carbon emissions by 80% by 2050 and...
Quote of the day
A city acquaintance of mine on Facebook "certainly didn't expect to be at home today and for the foreseeable future." Grim times.
WHO knows?
How many malaria cases does Nigeria have every year? And how many deaths? You would think the obvious place to find out would be the World Health...
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