Africa Focus

 India is expanding its footprint in Africa so aggressively that a mighty buzz has arisen about Sino-Indian rivalry for influence on the continent. On the face of it, India and China are not in the same league when it comes to trade with Africa. While India’s two-way trade with Africa soared from about $1 billion in 2001 to $46 billion in 2010, it is eclipsed by China’s, which surpassed $120 billion in 2010. Still, officials in both countries were forced to respond to talk of rivalry after Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in May offered $5 billion in loans to help Africa meet its development goals, $700 million for new institutions and training programs, and another $300 million line of credit for a new rail line between Ethiopia and Djibouti. Singh announced the loans at the second India-Africa Summit, held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. They follow a $5.4 billion credit pledge at the first India-Africa Summit in 2008.

But as the global travel and tourism industry slowly recovers from the Great Recession, with the recovery in emerging regions outpacing that of North America and Europe, now is a good time for Africa to assert itself as the ultimate determinant and carve new directions in tourism.

On Jan. 5, police in Kericho, the heartbeat of Kenya’s tea industry, stormed the United States Military HIV Research Program clinic after hearing that a child had died there while donating blood. The claims proved false, Kenya’s Daily Nation newspaper reports, but they intensified muttering about the facility engaged in research into the human immunodeficiency virus that causes AIDS.

Just shy of a year before a popular uprising toppled Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, a little-noticed revolt took place that shows how Egypt’s future is more closely tied to Africa than to the Middle East.

In an exclusive interview with TNJ, his Excellency John Dramani Mahama, vice president of Ghana, addresses why Ghana attracts African descendants.

In an exclusive interview with The Network Journal, His Excellency John Dramani Mahama, vice president of Ghana, addresses why his country attracts African descendants

Early in August, at a conference organized by Resource Driven Technology Centre for South Africa, Science and Technology Minister Naledi Pandor rolled out a prototype of a hydrogen-powered electric bicycle nicknamed “Ahi fambeni,” Tsonga language for “Let’s go.”

In 1960, Britain’s political elite conceded that the sun was indeed setting on the British Empire. Their capitulation is enshrined in a Feb. 3 address by then-British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan to the parliament of South Africa during his tour of the dying empire’s African colonies.