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/ 10 December 2004
The villagers in Egebeleku community have clean water. Shell built the project, powered by solar panels, to improve relations with the local communities they work alongside in the oil-rich but notoriously volatile Niger Delta. However, visitors hear one persistent whisper: "Put me in the Shell work, I need a job; I don’t have any work at all." The pleas of the youths lie at the heart of the problems that haunt Africa’s biggest oil producer.
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/ 10 December 2004
The Department of Trade and Industry is to launch the Small Enterprise Development Agency (Seda) next week, replacing small-business promotion agencies Ntsika and the National Manufacturing Advice Centre (Namac). The move represents a policy shift by the department, and Seda will provide non-financial advisory and support services.
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/ 10 December 2004
Who do you believe, Marion Jones or Victor Conte? The question was posed by Jones’s lawyer when the Olympic star was accused by Conte of having taken performance-enhancing drugs. The accusations have been the story in the United States, and beyond, over the past week.
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/ 10 December 2004
Right, then. The situation is this: Just two months after his appointment, and with one short tour and two Test matches under his belt, South African cricket coach Ray Jennings has been told by his employers to watch his mouth. There are two ways of looking at this. On the one hand, many will think it remarkable that Jennings lasted two months before being told to shut up.
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/ 10 December 2004
The so-called blood transfusion scandal illustrates precisely why we need technocrats and why it can be dangerous to air technocratic arguments in public — there should not be a simple opposition to technocracy, as argued in a recent M&G supplement. In many instances, there is little room for misinterpretation of statistics, as the process of interpretation is itself just a conversion of the statistics into a different form.
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/ 10 December 2004
The new Zanu-PF leadership has thrown down the gauntlet to the Zimbabwean War Veterans’ Association and warned them not to ”behave like renegades or anarchists”. A war of words has erupted between the two sides, a battle that can intensify as the primaries draw closer.
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/ 10 December 2004
There is a fault line running through Ukraine that is a product of its history and people. To talk about the history of Ukraine as simply one of Russian occupation is to disenfranchise the voice and identity of a large chunk of its population. If you are not a Uniate Catholic from western Ukraine, you are likely to be Russian Orthodox from the east or south. Hence real democracy can only be achieved if it is accepted as a multi-ethnic state.
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/ 10 December 2004
Mozambique’s ruling party, Frelimo, surged ahead last week in unofficial results from the country’s recent election, puzzling analysts who had expected a neck-and-neck finish with the opposition Renamo. This drop in Renamo support was accompanied by an equally dramatic fall in voter turnout. ”People chose to stay in the fields — voting doesn’t fill the belly,” said independent journalist Marcelo Mosse.
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/ 10 December 2004
Even the urbane Arsène Wenger might get a little flustered. Whether he reads the newspapers or, more likely, his club’s statistics, the Arsenal manager must gape at the suddenness with which life has gone astray. The 3-0 win over Birmingham City at the weekend and the 5-1 thrashing of Rosenborg in the Champions League were a relief, but beating such quiescent visitors brings limited reassurance.
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/ 10 December 2004
Although Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon will embrace Blair as a ”great friend” of Israel when Blair arrives for the two-day visit on December 21. Israel is increasingly wary that British Prime Minister Tony Blair will use his impending visit to force the pace of the peace process.