South African President Jacob Zuma is in Angola this week. Zuma's government has been working for the last few of years to strengthen relationships between the two countries as a fuel-hungry South Africa tries to find solutions to its energy needs. Among other things. The two countries are ostensibly working hard together on various treaties and shared priorities (like regional integration). But

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Zambia's foreign affairs minister, Given Lubinda, will not be representing the country at the AU after the president suspended him from the delegation. His suspension is rumoured to stem from either leaking of confidential information to media outlets or an internal power-struggle within the party (here and here). Meanwhile, in other Zambia news, President Michael Sata has announced his new job

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It sounds like (see link) the Zambian government is starting to get really nervous as maize prices stay high in the country after nearly doubling two months ago. Zambia has a Food Reserve Agency which should buffer the ordinary poor from this kind of thing but the subsidies and controls don't appear to be having the desired effect. Sata is talking about fearing riots. "If you don't remember,

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Christine Lagarde is off to Malawi where IMF-recommended reforms have been (fairly aggressively) implemented in something of a catch-up run since Joyce Banda took office. Much was expected from the long-awaited reforms, which included a currency devaluation. The results have been less than impressive. Inflation has spiked, pushing up already-sky-high food, fuel and medicine prices, foreign

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Zimbabwe is to begin exporting nurses to various countries, including "Europe, Australia and the Sadc region". Zimbabwean nurses have been working internationally for many years, many, in fact, supporting their families through Zim's era of hyperinflation and financial crisis. This, however, is the first time that the Zimbabwean government will take a direct hand in the process. It all began

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Interesting (US-focused) piece on the user-pays problem in Higher Education (from Open the Echo Chamber). As a region, higher education opportunities in Southern Africa are both extremely limited and overwhelmingly government funded. Here, too, tuition fees have risen steeply over the last decade, with little corresponding increase in value or quality. East Asian countries accelerated their

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"Everybody knows" that corruption is a huge problem in Africa. Like so many other (non-evidence-based) assessments, Africa knows this, too. So, fighting corruption is a high priority. Especially fighting corruption of former regimes. To be fair, this is quite often necessary. But all those rights-based groups advocating anti-corruption activities can sometimes be a little over-zealous or at least

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Over the last few months, I've sat in many meetings where discussions of food security have immovably revolved around Nepal, the US and, for some odd reason, Eastern Europe. Evidence-based development planning could so easily start with a simple glance at this map. Open publication - Free publishing - More food security

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Madagascar has had a particularly rough couple of years. Now the UN Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of slavery is calling on the country to work on poverty as a way of fighting slavery: Link.

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Roving Bandit argues here that aid shouldn't be cut to Rwanda just because they are probably  responsible for repeatedly invading, raping and pillaging the DRC. Is that really what is going on? Does it not, also, have to do with the fact that Rwanda has been disproportionately feted and funded over the years out of guilt and on the seriously mistaken belief that it is anything other than an

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