Author: WHES

Niger’s President Mamadou Tanja has visited the country’s south, where severe food shortages are affecting at least 2.5 million people.

GABORONE, Botswana — As global leaders gathered in Davos, Switzerland, for the World Economic Forum in January, officials from President Bush’s $15 billion anti-AIDS program issued a news release citing their accomplishments. Nowhere were the numbers more impressive than in Botswana, where 32,839 AIDS patients were receiving life-extending treatment with the help of the U.S. government, they said

President Bush announced a $1.7 billion aid package for Africa devoted primarily to combating malaria, unveiling the initiatives yesterday in advance of an international summit next week dedicated to breaking the continent’s perpetual cycle of poverty, disease and famine.

KOMOTHI KIRATINA, Kenya, July 2 — Peter Kanans, a coffee farmer whose house has no running water and a leaking roof, said he had a message for the leaders of the world’s richest countries who will meet at the G-8 summit next week: Unfair trade practices are enriching African officials and international coffee chains while village farmers grow steadily poorer.

MALAPO, Botswana — In the Kalahari Desert, where the landscape stretches brown and dusty in every direction, water is power. So when the truckloads of men from the government rumbled up to this ancient Bushmen village three years ago, they found the steel drums that held the community’s precious reserves. Then, said villagers, the men tipped the drums over, spilling the water into the sand.

In the highlands of Ethiopia, the temperature dips to an average 37 degrees at night. A typical family’s one-room house has no chimney, and the stove consists of three stones supporting a pot over an open wood fire. The mother fixes dinner as her toddlers edge closer, trying to stay warm in the swirling smoke.

On the question of Africa right now, the Bush administration is up against Nelson Mandela, Tony Blair and the rock star-industrial complex, not to mention Sun Microsystems and Pat Robertson. It’s one of those occasions when the sole pole in our (supposedly) unipolar world looks pretty much surrounded.

MUHAJARA, Sudan — Tarjab Jalab, a sinewy, bearded rebel commander in the Sudan Liberation Army militia, limped across this scarred and half-empty village on a bandaged foot. Dozens of leather pouches hung from his arms and legs, each containing Koranic verses. The amulets had not saved Jalab from being shot by pro-government militiamen, but he was still eager for battle.

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