Africa

A meeting of top U.S. officials on Sudan last week was supposed to yield big recommendations on how to craft the right balance of incentives and pressures toward the Khartoum regime, which stands accused of fomenting genocide in Darfur and stirring instability in its autonomous southern region.

Manuela Paraipan: What role for Libya in Africa? Is it an influential power broker in areas of conflict, such as Darfur and Chad?
 

NEW YORK –'And for me? Do you have a gift for me?" The Togolese soldier held my passport and was looking through it slowly and carefully.

I was sitting in a small village with a group of fellow students in a rural area of Uganda. Our graduate work had brought us to this village, to speak with a sesame farmer about efforts to improve the international marketing of his crop. I had been interviewing for eight straight days in the heat and was exhausted when the farmer said, "The middle men, they are ruining us. Can you help?"

We resolved that these issues [of restoring the MDC Party's powers within Zimbabwe's unity government] must be dealt with now, in their totality before this Government becomes completely discredited in the eyes of the people and the continent" (Zimbabwe's prime minister Morgan Tsvangirai of his efforts to re-establish a rule of law in Zimbabwe).

The dilemma faced by Zimbabwe's prime minister, Morgan Tsvangirai, is a thorny one.  He garnered the majority of votes in the first round of the presidential elections in March 2008 but chose