Business Day (South Africa)  Published: 2011/12/23 07:29:38 AM A CLEAR signal of the change taking place in Africa is the appeal by ailing Portugal to its former colony, Angola, for investment. While Portugal’s economy is con tracting, Angola is looking at growth rates of double digits next year on a booming oil economy. According to [...]

Business Day (South Africa)  Published: 2011/12/12 07:40:02 AM THE issue of the fuel subsidy in Nigeria exemplifies everything that is wrong with this giant economy operating well below its potential. It reflects years of neglect of state refineries; it underlines the irony of being Africa’s biggest oil producer but also a major importer of refined [...]

Business Day (South Africa) Published: 2011/11/28 07:44:30 AM   ZAMBIAN President Michael Sata probably had the right idea when he decided to embark on a widespread firing spree in order to rid his country of corruption, given how entrenched the malaise has become in Zambia. Victims to date have included 73 district commissioners, the central bank [...]

Published: 2011/11/14 07:40:40 AM WHEN the topic of youth leadership comes up in SA, what comes to mind are the antics of Julius Malema and his cohorts in the African National Congress Youth League. The subject has many people throwing their hands up in despair, not only at the reports of bad behaviour and self-serving [...]

Published: 2011/10/31 07:42:02 AM I WAS afforded a glimpse into the world of climate change last week at the 2011 African Economic Conference in Addis Ababa and observed how the debate has taken on almost religious proportions.

Published: 2011/10/17 07:36:20 AM IN AFRICA, where doing business often involves traversing a minefield of politics, concluding a deal around election time is not a good idea. Poor institutional structures mean there is undue emphasis on personal relationships. A change of a minister or even a top bureaucrat can mark the end of a carefully [...]

Published: 2011/10/03 07:41:10 AM EQUATORIAL Guinea is associated with many things — arbitrary detention, torture and killing of citizens, fraudulent elections and corruption. One thing it is not certainly associated with is a quest to improve the quality of human life. This makes the establishment of the Obiang Nguema Mbasogo International Prize for Research in [...]