Africa

Today, someone tried to scam me. It was more amusing than anything else, honestly. I was trying to catch a cab in tourist central of Dakar — someone please tell me why the Place de l’Indépendance is where tourists seem to congregate here? It’s probably the most boring place in the entire city. The only reason I was there was for an interview. The Place de l’Indépendance is a big rectangular square, that commemorates, you guessed it, Senegal’s independence from…

LA Times: The Gates Foundation has poured $218 million into polio and measles immunization and research worldwide, including in the Niger Delta. At the same time that the foundation is funding inoculations to protect health, The Times found, it has invested $423 million in Eni, Royal Dutch Shell, Exxon Mobil Corp., Chevron Corp. and Total of France — the companies responsible for most of the flares blanketing the delta with pollution, beyond anything permitted in the United States or Europe.…

Associated Press; Wednesday, October 18, 2006; 3:19 PM: By HEIDI VOGT The Associated Press THIAROYE, Senegal — At a funeral in this Senegalese fishing town, mothers wept for their sons _ dozens of whom drowned when the wooden craft they hoped to take to Europe was caught in a storm. Then the mothers decided to stop it from happening again. The group from that March funeral has grown to 357 women _ all having lost a son, husband or cousin…

Before you head out to buy your next tank of gas, go read this incredible series of articles from two-time Pulitzer-winning Chicago Tribune reporter Paul Salopek: Oil Safari What does it take to quench America’s mighty thirst for gasoline? Pulitzer-winning correspondent Paul Salopek traced gas pumped at a suburban Chicago station to the fuel’s sources around the globe. In doing so, he reveals how our oil addiction binds us to some of the most hostile corners of the planet—and to…

Ethan Zuckerman: BBC reports the death toll from the second intifada at roughly 4000. Iraq Body Count offers an estimate of civilian deaths in Iraq between 39,000 and 43,000 – a study from Johns Hopkins projects a much larger number, 100,000 by October 2004. Marc Herold at UNH projects between 3 and 4,000 civilian deaths in Afghanistan from October 2001 – June 2004. Military casualties include 407 coalition casualties in Afghanistan and 2,564 coalition deaths in Iraq. Using the JHU…

If I wasn’t already settled in Oakland, I might consider this. RADIO, TELEVISION STRINGER POSITION VOICE OF AMERICA – DAKAR, SENEGAL Looking for Television/Radio reporter to become stringer based in Dakar, Senegal for Voice of America, West and Central Africa bureau. Great experience for recent graduates with interest in international reporting. Recent stringers have gone on to work for Bloomberg, United Nations news services, al-Jazeera English, DPA German news service, German television, CNN, NPR … New position is opening up…

The World: Today’s answer is Senegal. The World’s David Leveille talks to a new Peace Corps volunteer there to find out what life is like for someone who’s recently been dropped in completely unfamiliar territory. Listen here.

Alright, I’ll admit it, I’m a map junkie. And I’m also a sucker for foreign policy discussion. So this morning, I find a link in the Canadian Cartographic Association’s blog an entry about one Prof. Thomas P.M. Barnett, who has this new book called The Pentagon’s New Map. His thesis is as follows: “The maps on these pages show all United States military responses to global crises from 1990 to 2002. Notice that a pattern emerges. Any time American troops…

WashPost Op-Ed by William Easterly (via Drezner): Jeffrey Sachs and Angelina Jolie toured the continent on behalf of MTV, with Jolie asking how we can stand by and let it be destroyed. The world’s leaders gathered at the United Nations in September to further discuss ending poverty in Africa, apparently unfazed by yet another voluminous U.N. report highlighting the failure of the grand plans (the “Millennium Development Goals”) to make any progress. They repeated a familiar refrain: If aid efforts…

Lane pointed me to this article on the BBC site talking about the famed (well, famed to me, anyway) Trans-Gambian Highway, which I had the “pleasure” of crossing a few times during my séjour in Senegal. Apparently there’s been quite a bruhaha going down across the River Gambia. (Senegalese newspaper Le Soleil’s latest article [FR].) BBC: The Trans-Gambian Highway, which runs further inland, has effectively been closed to cross-border traffic for over a month by Senegalese transporters protesting against the…