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By David Martin and Phyllis Johnson From our America and the World 1984 Issue    T here is always something new out of Africa," said the ancient Greeks, as recorded by Pliny the Elder. The contemporary Africa-watcher, however, might be forgiven for wondering whether it is not all more of the same. In 1984, as in 1983, events in southern Africa and the devastating drought and famine which cost the lives of countless tens of thousands again dominated the year. For Nigerians, the new year began with yet another military government, which had ousted the elected civilian administration on the last day of 1983. In Chad, civil war ground on with no solution in sight. Libya’s unpredictable leader, Colonel Muammar al-Qaddafi, continued to make headlines with stor...

By James Fergusson, Stig Jarle Hansen Reviewed by Nicolas van de Walle From our September/October 2013 Issue   W hen Somalia won its independence in 1960, experts hailed it as one of the few countries in sub-Saharan Africa with a bright future because it lacked ethnic divisions and thus constituted one of the region’s few genuine nation-states. But several decades of corrupt and inept rule led to economic collapse and growing divisions within the complex mosaic of clans that form Somali society. State collapse in the early 1990s led to civil war, piracy off the Somali coast, international interventions of varying degre...

What East Africa Can Learn From Past Booms By Ricardo Soares De Oliveira April 24, 2014 A man works at an illegal oil refinery in Bayelsa, Nigeria, November 2012. (Akintunde Akinleye / Courtesy Reuters)

Kenyan security forces round-up of thousands Somalis in Nairobi's Eastleigh neighborhood by Heikal Kenneded Sunday, April 24, 2014 Of all the lessons to be drawn from the recent Kenyan security crackdown of the Somali communities in the Eastleigh enclave of Nairobi, the most widely accepted maybe it’s time that Somali businesses quit investing in foreign countries where they stick out and begrudged, instead invest in their homeland. The Somali community's success in Eastleigh, Nairobi has long elicited the envy of many Kenyans who for the longest time wondered how these mere refugees who entered their country two decades ago could run the city’s most lucrative shopping mecca while buying all the plots for housing. This has ultimately caused tension within communities in Kenya, leading to pervasive, but unsubstantiated accusations of links to piracy and terrorism activities. However, this recent police sweep and unwarranted targeting of Somalis in Kenya was ...