Category Archives: Africa

I think I’ve hit on a catchy structure for a modest reshuffling of my Honors seminar in Colonial Africa. Much of my reading list will remain the same, but this restructuring is designed to make the way I look at … Continue reading →

Greg Mills and Jeffrey Herbst argue that it’s time to resume aid to Zimbabwe to help out the unity government. The problem here is that while almost everyone would like to help Morgan Tsvangirai and his allies “soft-land” the Zimbabwean … Continue reading →

Another thing that came up in a recent email exchange was a request for “starter scholarship” on a particular African nation. For most contemporary African countries, I really feel that there is not a single great “done-in-one” book that is … Continue reading →

The news from eastern Congo is, as it has long been, not good. I understand why outside mediators and observers want to keep trying to patch up old cease-fires or broker new ones between the ever-shifting array of combatants in … Continue reading →

I don’t see any reason for enthusiasm about the signing of a Zimbabwean power-sharing agreement. Whether it will be at all meaningful not only remains to be seen, but depends very much on changes that are very much below the … Continue reading →