Barack returns to Africa? Sort of

This week president Obama will address the Moslem world from Cairo, Egypt, Africa.

And yet nobody sems to think that he will feel like he is a man going back to his roots? The answer may surprise the uninitiated. Egypt is geographically in Africa but let's be honest about it....Egypt is an Arab country and Obama knows that. It will be a different story when he travels to Ghana soon. Those who seek to over-simplify Africanicity often fail to recognize that Africa is a continent of more than fifty countries, at times divided by muddy rivers and high mountains, but at other times by wide cultural and racial lines.
In biblical days, an African was barely distinguishable from his fellow middle-easterners, readily intermingling with and disappearing amongst them. The African of today has a darker hue. The irony is that Obama is of Nilotic heritage. What could be more descriptive of Egypt than the Niles? May be he should feel at home in Egypt, too. But will he be welcomed as a son of Africa? I doubt it. But I sure hope so!

The profits of piracy

Who is profiting from the piracy trade? It would seem that the only beneficiaries of this business are the pirates who make a living off this ancient profession. The truth runs a little deeper than that. There are massive transaction fees invloved in paying out pirates, not to mention the increased insurance rates for merchant lines.In order for a pirate to be paid, there have to be a few middlemen taking cuts all the way from the time a ship is seized to the final settlement. Suppose a pirate demands a two million dollar ransom. The final settlement is believed to be at least twice this amount because ofall the intermediary "work" that has got to be done in Europe. At what stage does the relationship between pirates and enablers become cyclical? When the intermediaries are making as much or more money than the pirates. We have reached such a stage already. Besides, it has laways been hard to believe that semi-literate Somali warlords are the masterminds behind these daring sea raids.I suspect there is more to Somali piracy than meets the eye.

The fall and rise of Jacob Zuma

CNN dedicated quite a few precious minutes to informing its viewers that newly inaugurated South African president Jacob Zuma is a polygamist with three wives. While this matter may be of some human interest in the West, it barely registers on the continent outside newsrooms and certainly pales in comparison with the 64-million rand question surrounding Zuma's ascendancy to the helm of Africa's richest and most promising country: how will Zuma go about delivering on his promise to provide a higher standard of living to the millions of his fellow citizens who wallow in shanty towns fifteen years after the demise of apartheid?Zuma is believed to be a man of his word (for better or for worse). I expect Zuma to move with deliberate haste to fulfil at least some of his promises to the poor, perhaps with an unpleasant doze of vituperative language, probably taking few prisoners in the process. Instead of wasting time speculating about the diplomatic challenges of handling Zuma's wives, one would expect the media to inform the world that the emergence of Zuma may well be the beginning of the impoverishment of the South African people through the pursuit of short-sighted wealth re-distribution programs that may appear to improve living standards in the short term, while slowly suffocating the continent's engine of economic growth.Zuma himself has so far chosen his words very carefully but many of his fanatical supporters have not been nearly as modest. Will Zuma allow the South African economy to grow and gradually alleviate the lot of the poor or will he opt for populist short-cuts? One can easily imagine that some of the radical supporters of the new president will exert enormous pressure on him to swallow thier own prescriptions. And by the way, Zuma does owe them a few favors. South Africa may be about to experience a tempest