Geography Archives: Nigeria

JOHANNESBURG, 11 May 2009 (IRIN) — Rich countries and firms are leasing or buying massive tracts of land in developing nations for the production of food or biofuel.  An area equivalent to Germany’s farmed land is at stake, and tens of billions of dollars on offer.  On the plus side, agro-industrial production could develop underused […]

  Africa has historically been less of a priority to U.S. foreign policy planners than other regions, such as the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and Latin America.  This was certainly the case when George W. Bush took office in 2001.  But during the course of his tenure, “Africa’s position in the U.S. strategic spectrum . […]

Dear CCR Supporter, On May 26, 2009, the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), co-counsel EarthRights International (ERI), and other human rights attorneys will bring oil giant Shell to federal court in New York for the start of a landmark trial for corporate accountability.  CCR is pleased to make two exciting announcements as we draw nearer […]

  “Our community is expanding: MRZine viewers have increased in number, as have the readers of our editions published outside the United States and in languages other than English.  We sense a sharp increase in interest in our perspective and its history.   Many in our community have made use of the MR archive we […]

“Our community is expanding: MRZine viewers have increased in number, as have the readers of our editions published outside the United States and in languages other than English.  We sense a sharp increase in interest in our perspective and its history.   Many in our community have made use of the MR archive we put […]

  Rudolph Peters.   Crime and Punishment in Islamic Law: Theory and Practice from the Sixteenth to the Twenty-first Century.   Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005.  xi + 219 pp. $30.99 (paper), ISBN 978-0-521-79670-5; $74.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-521-79226-4. In his Crime and Punishment in Islamic Law, Rudolph Peters has provided an excellent, accessible, clearly delineated, […]

One of Barack Obama’s leading advisors has done more damage to Africa, its economies and its people than anyone I can think of in world history, including even Cecil John Rhodes.  That charge may surprise readers, but hear me out. His name is Paul Volcker, and although he is relatively unknown around the world, the […]

Today’s food and financial crises have, in tandem, triggered a new global land grab.  On the one hand, “food insecure” governments that rely on imports to feed their people are snatching up vast areas of farmland abroad for their own offshore food production.  On the other hand, food corporations and private investors, hungry for profits […]

  Intermediaries, Interpreters, and Clerks: African Employees in the Making of Colonial Africa.  Madison University of Wisconsin Press, 2006.  342 pp.  $45.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-299-21950-5. In the 1970s and 1980s, an edited volume focused entirely on African colonial intermediaries such as interpreters, translators, clerks, and secretaries would not have aroused much interest from historians of […]

The questions regarding variations in social development, economic progress, and political empowerment have produced a voluminous literature over the past century, and because of the complexity of these issues, much important reflection will continue well into the future.  In the early 1980s, a United Nations’ Commission coined the term “sustainable development” as a public statement […]

The past week has been a wild roller-coaster ride in and out of Southern African ruling-party politics, down the troughs of world capitalism, and up the peaks of radical social activism.  Glancing around the region and world from those peaks, we can see quite a way further than usual. Looking first to South Africa, Saturday’s […]

While taking a significant toll on public revenues,1 repayment of the public debt has, since 2004, ceased to be a major concern for most middle-revenue countries and for raw material-exporting countries in general.  In fact the majority of governments of these countries are having no trouble finding loans at historically low interest rates.  However, the […]

  Nothing expresses the widening gap between the mind frames of the Iranian ruling elite and their Western counterparts more than the headlines in their respective newspapers.  The American media, above all, have unilaterally resolved the intelligence questions over Iran’s nuclear program.  The New York Times leads the pack with articles and even editorials that […]

  You’ll be familiar with the story.  An evil or crazy (the two are interchangeable) maniac is trying to destroy the American way of life, sowing destruction in an American city, blowing up American buildings, killing American citizens.  We stand amidst the rubble, watching the firemen, wondering what happened.  This man is demented, unreasonable; he […]

Summary Paul Collier, in an attempt to bring development economics to a wider audience, has written a book that departs from what he calls the “grim apparatus of professional scholarship.”  The result is a book that is almost entirely unverifiable.  What is verifiable turns out to be an elaborate fiction.  Collier’s thesis is based upon […]

  Awash in oil, yet its people, for the most part, are destitute.  Nigeria discovered “liquid gold” half a century ago and today is the world’s eighth largest oil exporter.  But the country is plagued by corruption, inefficiency, underdevelopment, and an uprising in its Niger Delta — the area where most of its oil reserves […]

With oil prices having more than doubled over the last 12 months, various reasons are being cited for the price increases. Adhip Chaudhuri, a visiting professor of economics at Georgetown University’s campus in Doha, Qatar, explains the cause and effect of high oil prices. Is the increase in oil prices plunging the global economy into […]

A telling remark about US imperialism’s double standards was uttered by Clinton-era deputy treasury secretary Stuart Eizenstat, who a decade ago was the driver of reparations claims against pro-Nazi corporations, assisting plaintiffs to gain $8 billion from European banks and corporations which ripped off Holocaust victims’ funds or which were 1930s beneficiaries of slave labor […]

  In even the most exploitative African sites of repression and capital accumulation, sometimes corporations take a hit, and victims sometimes unite on continental lines instead of being divided-and-conquered.  Turns in the class struggle might have surprised Walter Rodney, the political economist whose 1972 classic How Europe Underdeveloped Africa provided detailed critiques of corporate looting. […]

In March 2008, the President of the African National Congress of South Africa, Jacob Zuma, led a high-level delegation of South African parliamentarians to the site of the victory of the forces of liberation at Cuito Cuanavale in Angola.  This visit was linked to the numerous ceremonies in Angola to commemorate the victory of Angola, […]