Columnist

CONTROVERSIES TRAILING FOOD and agriculture research involving genetically modified foods (GMOs) have remained unrelenting since the turn of the last century and the beginning of the new millennium. These controversies do not show any sign of abating or going away soon as many people continue to react with fears, suspicion, cynicism or doubt about safety […]

PROJECTIONS ABOUT AFRICA’S projected population in 2030 and 2050 are commonly cited among those doing things or writing on Africa’s statistics. It is sometimes tempting to take those projections on the face value and simply run with them. Such projections have some advantages such as providing some ideas – no matter how vague – about […]

WOLOF PEOPLE OF SENEGAL claim that the Jollof rice originated from them. Although the Wolof tribe is mostly associated with Senegal, their kinsmen are also found in parts of Gambia and Mauritania. On their claim to Jollof rice, history seems of relevance in the past. What curious minds now focus upon is what to make […]

GOLD WILL CONTINUE TO be relevant in the global monetary system irrespective of whatever transformation takes place in the future. Although money has moved into the digital economy, its hard currency versions will still be around for a long while. The issue of convertibility might pose less problem across countries as more and more economic […]

GOLD COAST WAS THE name by which a former British colony in West Africa was known from 1821 till March 4, 1957 when its name was changed to Ghana as the United Kingdom granted independence to what is today an Anglophone country, one of the most popular in West Africa. The name Gold Coast became […]

SUDAN HAS BEEN BETRAYED and abandoned by its leaders within, at the continental level in Africa and the wider world. Children and adults in the city and in the countryside are panicking. Lives are in danger. Hunger stalks the land and diseases are ravaging the country as guns are roaring, all because two people are […]

NEWS, STORIES AND REPORTS of internal feuds have rocked major countries on the eastern flank of Africa for nearly four years like in a relay race, with one happening after the other. Tales of killings, human displacement, food crises of famine proportion, epidemics, disruption of medical services, school closures, economic doldrums and power vacuum were […]

BEFORE THE JUNE 2010 report on Africa by McKinsey, a global consulting company, Africa was largely ignored by many pundits, influential media, global policy analysts, investment consultants, international investors, diplomats and even influential politicians in the West. US President George W. Bush, in one of his most famous blunders while in office, once referred to […]

BERLIN’S NOTORIETY FOR building walls predated the 155-kilometre-long wall, the construction of which started from August 13 and was completed on October 3, 1961, within a period of less than two months. The wall, which surrounded West Berlin, was meant to prevent people from escaping to the West from East Berlin. In other words, the […]

ALL POLITICS IS LOCAL, after all, and South Africa’s politics is typical. In a country where the new high road to power is the street and the new sentiment for seizing power involves suborning local people and inciting them against migrants, politics is taking the rest of the country down the path of irreversible decline. […]