Africa

Nigeria’s privatisation programme covers several sectors, including banking and finance, manufacturing, and tourism. Given the criticisms leveled at privatisation programmes in other sectors, it appears timely to evaluate the proposals for the privatisation of the utility sector.

At the UN Climate Change Conference that took place in December 2007 in Bali a new phase of international climate negotiations began. The result: African countries will remain exempt from  emission reductions. Instead they were offered financial help to adapt to the impacts of climate change which pose an especially serious challenge to the countries of the South.

Leonie Joubert, a renowned journalist and photographer, reports on the impact of climate change in South Africa. Her essay is accompanied by striking photographs of  South Africa’s vulnerable landscapes and of the people depending on them for their livelihoods.

"Boiling Point", a publication of the Heinrich Böll Foundations' Southern Africa Office, explores the lives of ordinary South Africans as climate change sets in. The stories of a rooibos tea farmer, a traditional fisherman, a maize farmer, a political refugee, and a traditional healer show the manifold impacts of a heating world. The book is complemented by a series of spectacular photographs.

Media and organisations that report mainly on and from Zimbabwe.

A Zimbabwean journalist - one of the few who reports from inside the country and thus prefers to remain anonymous - on the culture of fear and the atmosphere of frustration within the country: "People have reached the stage that if they go to the polling stations, they will not be intimidated into voting for Mugabe. The problem is that Mugabe will instill so much fear in people so that they will be too scared to go the polling stations."

On Saturday March 29th, 2008 I realised that whatever inspired Munch’s famous painting “The Scream” it was probably comparable to being locked in a room with Zimbabwean Electoral Commission (ZEC) officials trying to count to 410.

The atmosphere in Zimbabwe is characterised by anxiety and anger. Since midnight March 29th, 2008 Zimbabweans have been eager to hear the official pronouncement of results by the body running the elections – but to no avail.

It is a symptom of the diminished expectations and shrinking horizons in Zimbabwean politics that Simba Makoni's entry into the 2008 presidential race has created such a stir in the country's body politic. With the country sinking further into the mire of an extended political and economic debacle, the prospect of yet another disastrous Mugabe electoral 'victory' appeared a desultory inevitability.

Background information and analysis after the elections in Zimbabwe.