Defying the global financial crisis, Guinea-Bissau, Gambia and Guinea have recorded sharp rises in foreign direct investment in recent months. Trouble is,...
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.
Greasy palms in Turkey
My young brother-in-law, Tolga, had a hernia operation yesterday in a large state-run hospital in Istanbul. When his wealthy aunt found out that she knew the...
Headline writers vs. facts
The BBC, which seems to be relishing the current financial crisis, reports on its website, under the headline 'US failure hits Europe shares', that "European...
Good riddance
Some rare good news in difficult times, as South Africa's Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang is sacked. She it was who promoted beetroot, garlic and...
Britain’s coolest politician?
In a rare display of normalcy from a politician, Andy Burnham, Britain's young Culture Secretary, has apparently told Q Magazine: "I would trade in the whole...
A bear with a sore head
Turkey has been drawn in to the Georgia crisis. Because the country allowed US aid ships to sail through the Bosphorus to Georgia, Russia has tightened border...
Sanity returns to Turkey
I am delighted to report that, unlike the prescient Daniel, my prediction that Turkey's governing AK Party was on its way out has proved almost totally wrong....
The value of democracy?
I was doing a little research for my upcoming book on West Africa yesterday, and came up with the following factoid: since 1960, the top five countries on the...
Men with queer accents
West Africa's drug problem is spreading beyond the borders of Guinea-Bissau, which I wrote about a few months back. The UN has warned that her nextdoor...
Countdown to crisis in Turkey
I have just spent two weeks holed up in a sleepy Turkish fishing village in the far eastern corner of the Mediterranean. Even there, one cannot escape the...
Taking down Turkey
Turkey's government - its most successful in decades - is on its way out. Last week, the Constitutional Court overturned the recent lifting of the ban on...
Nothing new under the sun
Among the most popular policy responses to recent rises in food prices are export bans. Cambodia has banned rice exports, for example. Kazakhstan, Pakistan...
Safe sex for money
A post I wrote last week described a "push" approach to AIDS prevention - circumcise men, tell people to use condoms, encourage them not to sleep around too...
The wrong approach to AIDS?
A new study published in Science claims that funds for HIV prevention (like most funds directed at Africa, cynics might argue) are being wasted. Telling...
More globalisation please
A typically forthright and sensible article from former WTO head Mike Moore in the New Zealand Herald argues that we need more globalisation, not less, in...
There’s more to life than football…
England football manager Fabio Capello went on an unusual overseas tour earlier this month. His destination? Maseru in Lesotho, where he visited an HIV...
A tussle in Turkey
The latest move in the long game between Turkey's hardline secularists and its moderate Islamist government is perhaps the most worrying yet. The chief...
The rough guide for migrants
A useful travel guide for would-be migrants, from Foreign Policy magazine. My only quibble would be their listing of Spain as one of the best countries to...
West Africa’s new resource curse
A few weeks back the Guardian noted the transformation of Guinea-Bissau, a tiny, jungly and desperately poor country on the tip of West Africa, into the...
Reforming Islam?
News that Turkey is to publish a modernised revision of the Hadith - the traditions that govern the practice of Islam - will come as a shock to those Turks...
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