Painting by Cheri Samba

Lokuta eyaka na ascenseur, kasi vérité eyei na escalier mpe ekomi. Lies come up in the elevator; the truth takes the stairs but gets here eventually. - Koffi Olomide

Ésthetique eboma vélo. Aesthetics will kill a bicycle. - Felix Wazekwa

Wednesday, April 14, 2010

What's new

A few stories of interest:
  • Rwanda suspends two newspapers critical of the government for six months, meaning they won't be able to cover the election campaigns - Texas in Africa isn't happy.
  • An excellent interview of Congolese academic Jean Omasombo in La Libre Belgique on the future of democracy in the Congo and decentralization.
  • Profiles of three newly promoted army commanders in Rwanda's The New Times. (When's the last time your national newspaper ran a profile of the new commander of the reserve force?) They share in common: raised in Uganda, highly educated - all of them underwent training in the US, and a love of sports and chess.
  • A blog posting from Alex Engwete, showing that the Spaniard kidnapped by the Enyele militia and allegedly shaven to use his hair as a fetish - had quite a bit of hair.
  • MONUC is fighting back! Ok, not on the battle field so much, but in the press. Their spokesperson contested the Congolese government's version of the attack in Mbandaka (MONUC had been accused of standing by while an innocent civilians was killed), and the head of the mission said that MONUC needs to stay longer in the country.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Too bad you're not labeling your postings so that they fall into categories. This blog is becoming a very useful resource, and it would be easier to use if somehow articles were classified into categories (shown on the homepage) as well. Because as it is now, to find a posting relating for instance to a certain aspect of mineral resources, one has to go through all the pages if he/she doesn't remember where/when it was posted exactly. Just a thought. Bests, Juliette

Jason Stearns said...

Thanks for that, I'm a bit lazy, I guess. You can also use the search bar at the top left of the page - it will search all postings for a particular word.

Lil said...

Jason--you could just tag the posts...it's pretty easy. I wouldn't call what Doss said fighting back really. When he was here in DC last week he was so diffident, made you wonder where the Doss of West Africa went. I think he said "allergic" at least twice a minute in reference to the many, many things to which Kabila is allergic.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the search bar remark, I had not seen it, as a matter of fact. Will make my life easier.

Post a Comment