Africa

The Man For a New Sudan

Ron Tang — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 22:46:00 -0400

When Roger Winter’s single-engine Cessna Caravan touched down near the Sudanese town of Abyei on Easter morning, a crowd of desperate men swamped the plane. Some came running over the rough red airstrip. Others crammed into a microbus that barreled toward the 65-year-old Winter as he climbed down the plane’s silver ladder. Some Sudanese call Winter “uncle”; others call him “commander.” On this day, angry and anxious, the people of Abyei wanted Winter’s help in averting a return to civil war between the predominantly Arab north and the black south -- a decades-long conflict, claiming more than two million dead,… more

Kenya on the Brink

Communications — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 12:00:00 -0500

A New America Event
03/03/2008 - 12:00pm

Kenya has drawn increasing scrutiny and absorbed U.S. policymakers' attention after the disputed results of the December election set off rounds of violence amongst political factions. During the runup to the elections, European Parliament member and Deputy Chairman of the German Liberal Democrats (FDP), Alexander Graf Lambsdorff, led an EU observer mission. As one of the first and leading voices to express doubts about the election process, he drew international attention to the electoral crisis. Graf Lambsdorff has argued that Kenya's electoral commission failed to establish the credibility of the vote-counting process due to unaddressed reported irregularities. Because of those irregularities, he has stated that some doubt remains about the accuracy of the official results.

Germany’s influential Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung has called Graf Lambsdorff a “non-diplomatic diplomat” and a “radical free-market economist…who is giving his opinion on various important hot-topics in European Politics [including] the question of Turkey's EU-membership, Germany's seat in the UN Security Council, the Services Directive and the European Chemical Directive."

Lunch will be served.

This event is co-sponsored by the New America Foundation and the Friedrich Naumann Foundation.

God's Country

Ron Tang — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 00:00:00 -0500

It was an ordinary soccer pitch: sparse tufts of grass and reddish soil surrounded by cinder-block homes. The two candidates stood on opposite sides of the field as the people of Yelwa, a town of 30,000 in central Nigeria, lined up behind them one May morning in 2002 to vote. Whoever had more supporters would lead the town’s council. And whoever led the council would control the certificates of indigeneship: the papers certifying that Yelwa was their home, and that they had a right there to land, jobs, and scholarships. Between the iron goalposts milled ethnic Jarawa, principally Muslim merchants… more

Eliza Griswold on Public Radio International | 'God's Country: Nigeria's Middle Belt'

Communications — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 14:39:00 -0500

New America in the News:

God's Country: Nigeria's Middle Belt (Public Radio International)

Over a slideshow of photos by Seamus Murphy, Lisa Mullins talks with The Atlantic magazine's Eliza Griswold about reporting in Nigeria's middle belt, and the history of religious tensions in the region.

Eliza Griswold wrote the article "God's Country" appearing in the March 2008 issue of The Atlantic. It is available online along with additional coverage of Nigeria's middle belt.

In Care of Nigeria's Poor

Communications — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 10:00:00 -0500

A New America Event
02/01/2008 - 10:00am

Last year, Nigeria's newly-elected president set forth a seven-step agenda to achieve the UN Millennium Development Goals and turn Nigeria into a top-20 industrialized nation by 2020. But this will be no easy task. Nigeria's wealth inequality is among the worst in Africa - a situation illustrated by the contrast between the nation's substantial oil wealth and a poverty rate of around 50%. Nigeria's National Poverty Eradication Program (NAPEP) responded to this challenge in December 2007 by launching an ambitious conditional cash transfer (CCT) program, In Care of the Poor (COPE).

In February, the New America Foundation/Global Assets Project and Displaced Children and Orphan's Fund's STRIVE program led by the Academy for Educational Development hosted development economist, Dr. Magnus Kpakol, for his first public U.S. presentation and discussion of the COPE program.

Kpakol first introduced COPE, a program takes an innovative twist on conventional and increasingly popular CCT programs in place around the world. The program not only provides cash transfers, but also skills training and micro-enterprise start-up funds to households in exchange for enrolling and keeping their children in school and providing for their basic health care needs. Dr. Kpakol outlined how the central government set up the program. This included the government picking 12 states to participate in the "pilot" phase of the program, and the government expecting these states to contribute matching funding for the program.

Following Kpakol's presentation, international development experts commented on the use and effectiveness of Conditional Cash Transfers for poverty eradication, wealth accumulation, and social protection around the world. Allyn Moushey, an advisor for the Poverty Analysis and Social Safety Nets program at USAID said she believed Nigeria's COPE is the first CCT program of such a scale in Africa. Alan de Brauw, Senior Research Fellow at the International Food Policy Reserach Institute (IFPRI) stressed that transparency, such as in regards to which children are chosen to participate in COPE, is important. Kpakol agreed with this point.

Questions for future consideration about Nigeria's COPE, and CCTs more generally, include: Even with its community-driven and microfinance elements, what potential does the program have to enhance livelihoods and empower Nigeria's future generations? What hurdles must it overcome in order to succeed? What U.S. partnerships and resources could be mobilized to support the development of the program? Coupled with other poverty eradication initiatives, does COPE hold the promise to meet the President's goals of increasingly access to education, health and food security and providing jobs and micro-credit to the poorest of the poor? And what lessons does Nigeria's approach offer other countries in their fight against poverty?

-Jeff Meyer is a program associate for the Global Assets Project in the Asset Building Program.

Peter Bergen in The New York Sun | 'Envoy's Slaying in Sudan'

Communications — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 07:29:00 -0500

New America in the News:

The Bush administration is dispatching a joint Diplomatic Security-Federal Bureau of Investigation team to Khartoum to investigate the murder of an American diplomat working to promote democracy and changes in the electoral process in Sudan, John Granville. ...

A senior fellow at the New America Foundation, Peter Bergen, said he suspected the hand of Al Qaeda in the killing. "Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahri have often called for attacks in Sudan in past months," Mr. Bergen said. "They see the Darfur operation in the same lens as Somalia in 1992-1993, not as a humanitarian mission but an attempt by the West to take over Muslim lands." ...

For the complete article, please follow this link.

All He is Saying is Give War a Chance, Too

Articles — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 13:58:00 -0500

Clausewitz is the name, and war is my game. You'll forgive a little levity from a dead Prussian, won't you?

I, Carl von Clausewitz, wrote the book on war. Literally. It's called Vom Kriege ("On War"), and I'm proud to say it's been required reading at military academies for two centuries. So when Herr Pinkerton told me he was writing a column about American military strategy in the Middle East -- I told him to take the day off.

Ironically, my biggest single point about war was actually a point about peace: winning the peace. As I wrote, "war is… more

Don't Militarize U.S.-Africa Ties

Articles — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 11:05:00 -0400

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have left little room for news coverage or informed discussion of what is going on in the rest of the world and how it relates to U.S. security interests. This goes double for Africa, which was largely ignored in policymaking circles even before Iraq and 9/11 began to dominate the foreign policy agenda.

Thus, few Americans are likely aware that the U.S. relationship with Africa has become increasingly militarized. In the long run, such a focus is not beneficial for either Africa or the United States.

When most Americans think of U.S. relations with… more

Occupational Hazard

Articles — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 12:55:00 -0400

"Take off your veil!" the Somali soldier shouted at the woman in the mostly empty street. Steadying his assault rifle with his right hand, he ripped away the woman's black niqab with his left. "Why are you coming so close to us? You have explosives?" He leveled the muzzle of his gun against the bridge of her nose. Her mouth, suddenly embarrassed and exposed, broke into a jester's forced grin.

"I just want a juice," she pleaded. Except for a handful of armed soldiers, the only other person on the deserted street was a man selling mango juice from behind a… more

Eliza Griswold

Operations — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 13:33:00 -0400

FellowEliza Griswold is a writer who focuses on conflict, human rights, and religion. Her reportage and analyses have appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, Harper’s Magazine, and The New Republic, among other publications. She was a 2007 Nieman Fellow at Harvard University and is the recipient of the first Robert I. Friedman Award for international investigative reporting. Her first book of poems, Wideawake Field, was recently published by Farrar Straus and Giroux.As a fellow at the New America Foundation, Ms. Griswold will continue to pursue her interest in conflict, human rights, and religion. She… more