Kenya: the arms race Kenyan authorities are grappling to answer the question of how large numbers of illegal firearms have ended up in civilian hands Referred to as the “green city in the sun”, Kenya’s capital, Nairobi, hosts more than 100 multinationals, including the United Nations Environment Programme. It is seen as a city with solid business magnetism and rich culture, and it is home to the second oldest stock exchange in Africa. But that is as far as Nairobi’s picture glows. The death rate from guns in Nairobi is 33 for every 100,000 people per year. Factoring in its…
Eddy Odour
China: the special relationship Economic and political ties between Africa and China have led to infrastructural development on a monumental scale but their roots go back millennia No one knows exactly how long ago the friendship between China and Africa began but contact and trade between the two can be traced as far back as 202 BC. This relationship deepened in the 14th century during the expedition of Ibn Battuta, a Moroccan scholar and explorer, to parts of Asia. The China-Africa connection was furthered in the same century by the travels of Sa’id of Mogadishu, a scholar who is said…
SDG overview: the statistics Citizens across the continent should demand more and better data to stimulate a healthy debate about the role of ‘good numbers’ in political accountability. In June 2011, Shanta Devarajan, the World Bank’s Senior Director for Development Economics (DEC), published an article, Africa’s Statistical Tragedy. The piece detailed how the continent was suffering from faulty statistics, which informed wrong policy decisions. The author noted that the main problem with African statistics was the weak capacity of the continent’s countries in collecting, managing and disseminating data. National statistical bodies around the continent were inadequately funded and their responsibilities…
