Africa

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.

The Heinrich Böll Foundation’s work in Africa is concentrated in the regions Southern Africa, Eastern Africa/Horn of Africa, and Nigeria. Our main mission is the support of civil society articipation in political decision-making processes.

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.

What will a post-elections Zimbabwe look like? We will have to wait and see. In the best case, a government of national unity or tentative reforms under ZANU-PF seem possible. In the worst case there might be a bloody uprising or the military could intervene in case of an opposition win. Anything is possible.

The Zimbabwe Election Support Network (ZESN) observes the run-up to the elections on March 29, 2008.

Interview with Zimbabwean journalist Basildon Peta on the prospects for the March 29, 2008 elections in his country, the options for the divided opposition and the stance of Zimbabwe's neighbours, the international community, and the EU.

The ruling Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) and its leader President Robert Mugabe have puzzled many by successively ‘winning’ elections in the midst of serious and unprecedented economic and political decline. What are the reasons? What is Mugabe's background?

Matabeleland consists of three western provinces of Zimbabwe, namely Matabeleland North, Matabeleland South and Bulawayo. This region, stereotyped as marginalised and underdeveloped, and also as a hotbed of political opposition both historically and currently, is once more poised to play a strategic role in the forthcoming elections.

Whoever wins in Zimbabwe's presidential elections on March 29, 2008 has his work cut out for them. The task is to restore this beautiful country to the “little Switzerland” it used to be before being engulfed in the current political and economic quagmire.

Perspectives is a publication series of the Africa offices of the Heinrich Böll Stiftung. With this series, we intend to let experts from Africa express their views about current political issues in their region. Here you find PDFs of all issues published between 2008 and mid-2012.

A contribution of the Heinrich Böll Foundation on "avoided deforestation" for the UN climate summit in Bali 2007.

Africa is the continent that will be hit hardest by climate change. Unpredictable rains and floods, prolonged droughts, subsequent crop failures, and rapid desertification have already begun to change the face of our continent. Africa’s poor will be particularly hit by rising temperatures.

Interview with Negusu Aklilu, co-ordinator of the Ethiopian Forum for Environment, editor-in-chief of “AKIRMA: a Magazine on Environment and Development“, and one of the primary signatories of the appeal Africa Speaks up on Climate Change.

The Heinrich Böll Foundation has organised a dialogue between civil society organisations from traditional resource demanders, resource-rich countries in sub-Saharan Africa, and actors from the emerging economies. The major output is the Memorandum “To Have And Have Not”.