Africa Works

Robert Mugabe, the aged head of what passes for Zimbabwe’s government, is sounding like a girl on the verge of a quickie marriage: diamonds are now his best friend, or at least best hope of clinging to power in Harare, one of Africa’s once–great capitals. I have neither been to Zimbabwe, nor met Mugabe; I have been in the wrong place, at the wrong time, perhaps since Zimbabwe is one of the gems of Africa and Mugabe one of the classic spoiled characters of the region. Once a beacon for transformation in Africa, Zimbabwe is today is a shadow of its former self, the victim of a political disease that’s not unique to Africa but perhaps expresses itself most destructively in this region: and that is the disease of the once great leader — a true folk hero in Mugabe’s case — permitting himself to degenerate first into a tyrant and then into the parody of a tyrant, a kind of comic misguided rogue who fails to see the walls tumbling down around him because he retains a posse of devote, devious henchmen.

Mugabe is not alone in Africa in falling prey to the delusions of the past, of holding on too long to a vacant power. Museveni in Uganda seems to have acquired the Mugabe virus, though he remains in the early stages of the disease. Wade of Senegal, once a modest reformer, clearly has a bad case of Mugabe-itis. Omar Bongo caught it and, forgivingly, died before his people suffered too grievously. Mubarak of Egypt is another victim. The disease is not without cures, however. Mandela avoided it. So did Jerry Rawlings of Ghana. And Mo Ibrahim, the Anglo-Sudanese tycoon, believes he has created a workable prophylactic: offering to pay African presidents to peacefully quit their offices.

In Mugabe of course, the disease of holding on to power has wreaked destruction on a scale unimaginable to Zimbabweans who knew their country, a mere 20 years ago, to be both the agricultural breadbasket of southern Africa and a spawning ground for great talents, both white and black. True. the demon of racial oppression was never expunged from Zimbabwe, only chased away to return in a new, more insidious form. Mugabe’s use of race as a tool of dictatorship is well known. How he manages to hang on to power is less understood, for in many ways, for more than Bashir of Sudan or Eyadama of Togo, Mugabe is the baddest of the bat cats on African soil.

In earlier days in the saga of Mugabe’s decline, I shared the hope with some others that a “humanitarian” coup could be engineered, perhaps even by the Bush administration, that would rid Mugabe from the political scene. Certainly if there is any military meaning to the term “humanitarian intervention,” then Mugabe ought to be its embodiment. The odds now seem slim for any forced removal of Mugabe, who somehow managed to craft a clever power-sharing agreement with the high-minded but inept Morgan Tsvangirai. The power-sharing agreement is nonsense; Mugabe retains both the public trappings of power and the behind-the-scenes control of the police, the army and the economy. This last preserve of Mugabe’s – the economy – has for some years been the subject of cruel merriment chiefly because Zimbabwe’s economy is wrecked and its currency nearly worthless. Yet commodities around the world are booming and from gold to cocoa, these hard goods are more valuable than any paper currency. In its new diamond mine, Zimbabwe has renewed wealth, and Mugabe hopes to tap it. “No one should doubt our resolve to sell our diamonds,” he said  on July 12. Activists want to stop him, though their conceptualization, “conflict diamonds,” applies most directly to nation-states in civil war, not sovereign countries controlled by forces of immorality or incompetence or both. The Otawa-based advocacy group, Partnership Africa Canada, in June released a detailed, timely and significant report on diamonds and Zimbabwe; the report, “Diamonds and Clubs: Militarized of Diamonds and Power in Zimbabwe,” is the best single source about events on the ground.

One asnwer to Mugabe’s persistent flouting of fair play and responsible governance is to ban Zimbabwean diamonds from international commerce. A ban, while well-intended and warranted, will be difficult to impose, if not impossible to enforce, because diamonds are among ultimate in fungible commodities, easier to move, easier to sell, and the origins of them are impossible to identify quickly.

That Mugabe will thus inevitable sell diamonds, and reap monetary rewards (potentially substantial since the Zimbabwean government claims to hold $1.7 billion worth of stones, and the country is believed to possess stones more in the ground worth billions more), will neither strengthen nor weaken his hold on power. Mugabe’s survival arise from dysfunctions within the wider region; African governance fails repeatedly to manage pathologies that cut across national borders. The answer is not a Pan-African government. Neither is the African Union up to the task of ejecting Mugabe and leading a transition to a better Zimbabwe. The one hope for this benighted country – so rich in human talent, so rich in history and geography – is for Jacob Zuma of South Africa to engineer Mugabe’s exit. Then South Africa should oversee a trusteeship in Zimbabwe for a period of years during which time the economy cab be stabilized, the police and army reformed, the process of reconciliation can be started and local and national elections held. An immediate Liberian-style transition is not possible. The opposition in Zimbabwe is too weak, disorganized and compromised. The physical infrastructure too ruined. Only South Africa has the moral authority and the physical capabilities to oversee a genuine transition in Zimbabwe. Neither the United Nations nor an alliance of Britain and the U.S. can be trusted to do the job well.

South Africans, having just performed splendidly as hosts of the World Cup, are on a roll. The world should urge Zuma and his government to seize the opportunity to both rid the world of a ruler among the most deserving of retirement and help launch Zimbabwe’s return to its former health. The trouble with this scenario is that Zuma and South Africa’s political leadership have deep reluctance to intervene in Zimbabwe. As Stephen Ellis, an professor of African Studies at Leiden university in the Netherlands and author of the seminal 2005 essay, “How to Rebuild Africa,” points out to me in an email: “South Africa has not responded well to this challenge, and Zuma’s freedom of manoeuvre is quite restricted.  He is himself a Zulu, who speak the same language as the Matabele, and is close to the old ZAPU leadership who were the ANC’s allies in the old days, in the 1960s and 1970s.  Zuma is now being threatened by Julius Malema who is openly courting Mugabe and is advocating ZANU-type policies in South Africa, including land reform.  China’s role here will be crucial – the ultimate question is: will Zimbabwe end up after Mugabe’s demise becoming a normal country once again?  Or will South Africa actually become more like Zimbabwe?  These are open questions.” And likely to remain so for some time.

If you think the international criminal case against Charles Taylor is a slam dunk, think again. The prosecutors in the International Criminal Court — in Holland’s Hague — apparently are in such desperate straits that they need to call on the assistance of the notoriously generous super-model Naomi Campbell.

No kidding. Campbell’s legal street-smarts seems essential to the case against Taylor. After spending tens of millions of dollars on capturing, incarcerating and compiling an air-tight case against the deposed Liberian dictator, the forces of good in African affairs now seem to be placing their bets partly, if not wholly, on the sworn testimony of a British beauty best known for her baroque temper tantrums.

The only development more unlikely than Naomi Campbell influencing the course of human-rights law is Naomi Campbell visiting Malawi in the company of Madonna for the purposes of adoping a baby!

Perhaps Campbell won’t drill a large hole in Taylor’s defense against claims he trafficked in conflict diamonds. Perhaps she will not recall that she received a big rock from the celebrity-seeking Liberian leader in 1997 when, according to reports, she apparently did — and at a “charity dinner” at the home of Nelson Mandela no less.

Let’s hope that on July 29, when the super-model is scheduled to testify, she will stun the court, not only with her striking looks but also with her penetrating memory of the receipt of a gift from a Taylor aide. Perhaps she’ll also tell the court, for curiosity’s sake, what Mandela himself was doing when Campbell got her early Christmas present.

Femi Kuti is visiting Philadelphia, fronting his own band, and my wife, who like Femi hails from Nigeria, tells me that no one — no one! — other than Femi should get to perform Fela’s music in public.

Fela is of course Nigeria’s most famous song writer and entertainer, now deceased since 1997. Femi is his talented, yet intevitably derivative, son. My wife is a Nigerian nationalist and presented with a performance by the Senegalese singer Cheik Lo of Fela’s classic “Shakara” song, on the classic Red Hot + Riot album, says emphatically that no one — no one! — but Femi should sing any of Fela’s songs.

“No one?” I ask Chizo. “No one,” she answers.

My wife doesn’t know Femi, and never observed an instance of nepotism that offended her sensibilities. She’s heard his music and knows he is trying hard to protect his father’s musical legacy. “This is a matter of blood,” Chzio tells me. “Blood trumps even talent.”

Who needs a pseudo-meritocracy when values arise from family, from place? Femi, on tour in the U.S., isn’t about to lay claim to Fela’s legacy on the basis of his DNA, yet his actions betray his beliefs. He is Fela’s oldest son after all. In an interview with the august New York Times, no mere aribiter of African music but of American high culture generally, insists that the Broadway hit musical, based on Fela’s songs and orchestrated by the neo-Fela Antibalas Afrobeat Orchestra, ought to travel to Lagos to perform before the home Nigerian team.

Femi is no Roland Barthes, no Gramsci of popular culture, but he understands enough about Fela to demand the great musician be recognized first and foremost as a Nigerian and next as an African. Only when his geographic roots are affirmed can the world hail Fela as a “world” musician. “It’s good that it’s on Broadway, the publicity is great, everyone is talking about it,” Femi told the Times, referring to the Fela musical. “But if there is truly respect for the music and the message, it has to come to Africa, back to Lagos and the Shrine that we, his family, have built for him. That is important spiritually and culturally.”

And important to Nigeria too. In life, Fela was often spurned by a Nigerian elite too ready to embrace conventional British norms. Now in death, Fela is a hero of authentic Nigerian-ness. He is a folk hero fast becoming a secular saint. For a man without a country in life, in death Fela is a national hero, and Nigerians — notably Femi, flesh and blood — are proudly claiming their own.

Sunday’s sickening bombings in Kampala may be the actions of Somalia’s al-Shabaab group, which claimed responsibility on Monday. The claim is more than plausible. Uganda has been a strong supporter of the American military role in Somalia and has even provided a contingent of troops to the American-led effort — and training of pro-US Somali forces on Ugandan soil. Al-Shabaab considers the Ugandan government an enemy. The logic for the terror group’s role in the sad events of yesterday seems clear: revenge. And there’s the real potential for a widening crisis. The Bush-era U.S. policy towards Somalia has not yet been revised under the Obama; that the policy urgently needs revision – perhaps radical revision – is a “no brainer.” James Traub, in the current issue of Foreign Policy, makes the case compellingly for a new tack on Somalia; is anyone in the Obama administration listening?

That Shabaab-directed violence may now be spilling into Uganda adds urgency to the importance of crafting a US policy towards Somalia that reflects the realities on the ground, which include the de facto partition of this geographically well-endowed region into 3 autonomous “provinces.” For Uganda, the time may also have come to review its explicit support for US military actions in Somalia; such a review need not occur because of the menace of Shabaab and the threat of continued terrorist attacks against innocent Ugandans as well as foreign guests, but stands on its own merits.

Having spent many pleasant and productive days in Kampala, I hope the city soon returns to “normal.” Kampala is perhaps the most peaceful, crime-free large cities in the entire African continent. Whatever shortcomings shown by Uganda’s often-criticized and autocratic president, Yoweri Museveni, he deserves great credit and respect for Kampala’s tranquility. The city is safe than any of similar size that I know in the U.S., for instance. And because of Kampala’s charms, which include its position on a tropical plateu, the city is a magnet for talented people throughout East Africa. In the days ahead, look for understanding to the writings of the city’s great newspaper, The Monitor, and its fine political commentator, Andrew Mwenda.

What I’ve learned about Africa, in ten years of visits to the region, study and reflection, is that if something is broken in Africa, somebody wants it broken. And possibly, or even probably, that somebody benefits from it being broken (or breaking it if it isn’t yet broken).

This single insight into how Africa works, however provisional and tentative, explains much about the history of the Congo, from its sudden birth 50 years agoin 1960 to its frustrating, bewildering, and pregnant-with-potential present in 2010. Going back to the beginning, which in the case of sub-Saharan Africa means returning to the years immediately prior to decolonization and the years immediately following political independence, is increasingly vital in order to understand the region’s future as much as its past. In the case of the Congo, which was never a nation-state until the Belgians declared it to be one, neither the design nor the intent of Congo’s notional creators supported the official narrative of nationalism. In short, the Congo was not meant to succeed. It hasn’t. The 50^th anniversary of the Congo is thus not an occasion for celebration. To modestly and soberly mark a half-century of Congo, read the opening paragraphs of Piero Gleijeses’ vital history of Cold War Africa, “Conflicting Missions” (University of North Carolina Press) which in great detail documents and assesses the interplay between U.S. and Cuban involvement in Africa from 1959 to 1976. Gleijeses skillfully shows a keen appreciation of the costs of decolonization – and the extent to which Europeans resented having to surrender an Africa they had long controlled and felt they had profitably developed. Gleijeses [in 2002] writes:

In 1945 virtually all Africa was divided among the Europeans: France and England has the largest shares; tiny Belgium ruled the immense colony of Zaire; Portugal was the master of Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau and several small islands; Spain held a few fragments; and the fate of the former Italian colonies had yet to be decided. There was no Soviet threat, no Communist subversion, and no threat to the white man’s rule.

Fifteen years later, however, colonial rule was in ruins… The swiftness of the Europeans abdication had many explanations. In a ripple effect, as a colony moved toward independence, expectations swelled in neighboring territories. And when colonial authorities applied the brakes, the response was not submission but riots. “Africa may become,” British prime minister Harold MacMillan warned in August 1959, “no longer a source of pride or profit to the Europeans who have developed it, but a maelstrom of trouble into which all of us would be sucked.” By surrendering formal power gracefully, however, the metropole could retain strong political and economic influence over its former colonies. And so Paris and London let their charges go.

As did  Brussels, with unseemly haste. In January 1959 riots shattered Congo’s capital, Leopoldville, and shook Brussells from its torpor. A few days later, a sobered Belgian government promised independence “without either baneful delays or ill-conceived precipitousness.” No date was set, but Belgian officials speculated that the transition would take 15 years. As unrest grew and concessions triggered more demands, however, the country seemed headed toward anarchy and radicalization, and Brussels began its headlong retreat. In October 1959 the government cut the timetable for independence to four years; three months later it slashed it to six months. On June 30, 1960, Congo achieved independence, for which it was utterly unprepared.

The world was equally unprepared for the birth of Congo. And the world remains so today.

The push by foreign investors to form large aggregations of land in Africa — plantations, in a word — is getting lots of attention and concern, but the reality on the ground is inconclusive about the potential for peril. Foreign investors may simply be dumb or naieve about the returns on aggregating farm land in a region of the world where historically plantations have not proved either practical or profitable. Africa is not, and never has been, Latin America. Assemblng land, meanwhile, is one achievement. But growing crops profitably requires much more than land and even farm labor, which is not actually plentiful in Africa either (because most farmers have their own land and want to work it). Crops, whether grown on plantations or in small plots, require water and sometimes fertilizer. The crops also must reach markets, some of them distant. Even if the owners of the plantation purchase all of their output, they must still move output in a timely fashion. And if they plan on exporting crops out of Africa, the logistics of international transport may be prove daunting.

So there is no reason to imagine that African planations will suddenly become numerous in parts of Africa (such as Ethiopia and Ghana) where they haven’t historically been. But if plantations do arise, alternative exist to the prospect of wage labor. Perhaps the most compelling alternative is for small farmers themselves to form cooperatives, in order to achieve production scale. Or they can themselves contract directly with a large buyer — a practice I’ve described in detail in The New York Times regarding the case of the American cotton merchant, Dunavant  — in order to benefit from the undeniable movement towards scale in African agriculture. In some parts of Africa, such as a tea plantation I once visited in Malawi, “outgrower” arrangements with farmers who live outside of the plantation proper provide them with both a ready buy for a cash crop, and technical assistance in growing it. A new study from a British development agency, the International Institute for Environment and Development. offers a review of Africa’s “plantation future” and its alternatives. While the authors presume too-bright a scenario for corporate farming in Africa, their survey of alternative “business models” for small farmers in Africa (and elsewhere) is valuable and timely.

The country of Guinea is receiving deserved praise for a wide-open national election — its first in decades — in which 24 candidates vied for the presidency. The resource-rich country, transitioning from military rule, hasn’t yet reported electoral results (and will probably hold elections again in the near future in order to determine which is the dominant political party in a post-coup era). While on June 30 17 candidates cried foul, the number and diversity of the candidates highlight the vibrancy of a country where for too long time appeared to have stopped. Across the continent, in Burundi, the electoral process is upside down, with only one candidate running. The result is a huge disappointment for friends of Burundi (and donors) who had hoped that elections could set the country on a new course. My first mentor in Africa, the gifted journalist Alexis Sinduhije, had set out to campaign for the presidency of Burundi only to join recently with other opposition leaders to boycott the poll. The last man standing is a former rebel leader; Burundi, sadly, has spawned many. In Guinea, expectations run high; in Burundi, high expectations mock the reality of poor performance. The experiences in both countries provide a reminder that elections in Africa are not good in themselves, but reflect the forces (for good or not) in the societies which hold them.

The recent U.S. legislation and Obama’s White House statement on the notorious Joseph Kony and his so-called Lord’s Resistance Army reflect an intensifying desire on the part of the U.S. government and the U.S.-based humanitarian community to either kill or capture Kony and end the threat of violence posed by him and his small band of armed followers. While Kony appears to no longer to possess the capacity for gruesome violence that he demonstrated five to ten to 15 years ago – kidnappings of many children in northern Uganda and brutal slayings of adults among his own ethnic group that seemed to further no political objective – he remains free and unpunished, despite an indictment from a UN tribunal for crimes against humanity and a failed effort by the Ugandan government, assisted by the U.S., to get Kony. Kony’s ability to both evade international law, and capture, remains unexplained and vaguely suspicious, given the capacity of the U.S. military to track rogue individuals and the professed desire of the Ugandan government to extinguish the Kony threat. No one really knows why Kony remains at large, still capable of doing harm, if not in northern Uganda, then in central Africa. But while getting Kony is desirable, wider forces are at play in the northern Uganda that suggest, even should Kony exit the scene, the contradictions and dysfunctions that contributed to the challenge of eradicating Kony and his forces in the first place, will persist, creating new conditions for instability. These forces include:

1.    The grievances of the Acholi (Kony’s ethnic group and the dominant group in northern Uganda) haven’t been addressed by the government of Yoweri Museveni. Acholi grievance is linked to widespread disaffection in Uganda from Museveni, who has governed Uganda for more than 20 years and threatens to run for re-election (or put up his son or wife as candidate in the next presidential election). The political leader of the Acholi is Norbet Mao, an articulate and forceful advocate. Mao claims that fear of reprisals from Kony made him reluctant to condemn Kony; Mao also negotiated at various times terms of surrender with Kony (discussions proved fruitless). Mao views Acholi grievances as central to the problem of northern Uganda. He says Museveni purposely permitted Kony to run wild, terrorizing fellow Acholi as a means of punishing the Acholi for failing to support Museveni during his armed struggle to overthrow his predecessor Milton Obote. Getting Kony won’t end Acholi grievances but actually could expand them. A permanent peace could raise Acholi expectations for a greater share of Ugandan resources, or for more radical options. Mao, for instance, openly talks how the Acholi should consider the peaceful pursuit of secession from Uganda. Any open Acholi secession movement would possibly complicate the already fraught project of allowing the southern Sudanese to vote on independence next year. Since Acholiland borders southern Sudan, any new South Sudan government could easily absorb the sliver of Uganda on its southern border. And since Mao says that, for the Acholi, being part of southern Sudan would be preferable to staying in Uganda, US policymakers rightly worry about the scenario. It will be hard enough to get south Sudan free from Bashir in Khartoum without Museveni suddenly becoming a problem on the question too.

2.    Acholi living in Britain and Canada, while never openly supporting Kony, have assisted him and his forces at various times (and may still be doing so). These Diaspora members served on a negotiating committee who discussed various failed deals, over many years, to bring an end to Kony’s violence. Western European donors even paid these Acholi to participate in the talks and in Uganda was widely believed that these British and Canadian Acholi passed on part of the money to Kony. Should Kony be killed or captured, some members of the Acholi Diaspora may assume a public role in advocating for the Acholi of northern Uganda (because Kony is deemed a terrorist by the US government and thus it is a federal crime for U.S. Acholi to assist him, and European Acholi have similar tried to keep a low-profile about their contacts with the LRA earlier in the 2000s). The point here is that isolating Kony hasn’t been the policy of Europeans: who can forget a few years ago with the Dutch national who ran UNHCR actually met Kony in the jungle and shook his hand – even while Kony was under an ICC indictment. Europeans conflate Acholi grievance with Kony’s mayhem. So does Ronald Atkinson, an historian at University of South Carolina who has written extensively on the “roots of Acholi ethnicity” and has extensively documented the Acholi sense of grievance. Atkinson views Kony as a creature (albeit a pathological one) of the repression of the Acholi by Museveni. Atkinson has lent an intellectual patina to the idea that, while Kony’s methods are reprehensible, he has done some good by drawing attention to the abuse of the Acholi under Museveni.

3.    Museveni has been accused time again of not wanting to lose Kony because the LRA threat has enabled his government to maintain higher military spending than it might otherwise have. Andrew Mwenda, the leading political journalist in Uganda, reported in detail a few years ago about “ghost soldiers” in northern Uganda: essentially the government pretended to send soldiers into battle against the LRA, with commanders (later fired) who collected their pay. Museveni claimed no knowledge of the scam, but an account in Foreign Policy of the botched Dec 2008 Ugandan attack on Kony’s base – which the US helped to  plan and carry out – suggests anew that the main problem in getting Kony may be that his “enemies” don’t want to. Interestingly, Museveni has for some years personally insured the well-being and safety of Kony’s mother, who lives peacefully in Uganda. Museveni needs Kony for two reasons: first, his capture or death could turn him into an Acholi martyr or, worse, pave the way for a more responsible leader like Norbert Mao to lead a peaceful and ethical secessionist movement (Mao maintains close links in Gulu, the capital of Acholiland, with Christian clergy). Second, Kony’s capture or death would rob Museveni of a major national-security justification for high levels of military spending by a country with no other internal threats.

4.    The U.S. government relies on Uganda to assist in its Somali strategy and so is reluctant to do anything to alienate Museveni. Hence why the Obama administration never pushed the idea of getting Kony in the first place (and why the Enough people decided instead to force a bill through Congress). Between Rwanda, Ethiopia, and Uganda, the Obama administration has assembled a troika of regional allies to assist in (a) the pacification of Somalia (obviously not going well) and (b) the hunt for home-grown terrorists (and joiners from the US) in East Africa. Museveni seems very invested in (a) not catching Kony and (b) not giving the Acholi more autonomy. Hence, the US treading lightly on the issue.

What’s the bottom line? Competing priorities by the “responsible adults” in this African neighborhood means bringing Kony to justice — rough or ready — remains very difficult. And getting rid of Kony — in whatever manner –  may not end tensions in northern Uganda, or eliminate the LRA, which could persist under the leadership of crypto-Kony personalities, spawned by the awful past and sustained by the contradictions of the murky present.

The international process to discipline the mining and sale of diamonds has been a Potemkin Village for some years – all show and no go, as enlightened English people sometimes like to say about themselves. In the case of diamonds, the so-called Kimberley Process has never worked as well as advertised. The process was designed largely by activists and then enthusiastically embraced and implemented by diamond mining companies and dealers (De Beers notably). The favorable embrace, which also covered governments, was essentially the kiss of death for the prevention of abuses in the “monetization” of raw diamonds. “Blood Diamonds” indeed became a popular cause, inspiring a movie – and causing many wealthy consumers of diamonds to wonder, at least, who got hurt in order for them to look rich. In many ways, the blood diamond campaign was the greatest success of a global movement aimed at disciplining resource exploiters, especially those in Africa. Intended at its outset 10 years ago to showcase a new kind of voluntary, global and bottoms-up monitoring of resources obtained and sold by combatants in African civil wars, the Kimberly Process never captured the complexity of mining diamonds in African nations ostensibly at peace and under the jurisdiction of legal, recognized governments. In a richly detailed report about Angola, an important diamond producer, Michael Allen of The Wall Street Journal valuably documents many of the contradictions of the monitoring the “diamond miners and sellers and international activists trying to insure good. Writer Mike Allen, a reporter for

In fairness to the activists who designed Kimberley, they meant well. They were ambitious, and the problem they tackled is very difficult. They tried hard. One of the activist groups, Global Witness, amply lived up to its name and for years has witnessed what’s gone wrong with diamond mining and attempts at transational regulation. The cynical might include that any well-intended but ultimately voluntary transnational process aimed at disciplining the long-shadowy business of diamond mining and dealing will inevitably founder. What’s needed are national governments who impose tough rules on diamond mining and trading within their own borders – and stiff, swift penalties for evasions. Of course the Angolan government is hardly about to do so, which may only mean that activists should be pushing for the government to be replaced by a “better” one. In the absence of any reasonable prospect of a revolution in Angola, reasonable people can reasonably propose Potemkin Villages in the meanwhile.

Yet the failure of Kimberley doesn’t mean the return to the worst years of blood diamonds. Those sad days aren’t likely to ever return. But the complexities of halting the brutality associated with diamond – and turning them into a “normal” product like coffee or textiles – are too difficult for voluntary transational monitoring.

The rush by international capitalists to gain rights to farm land in Africa continues. Now Indian investors are drawining attention for theit interest in growing stuff. Ethiopia has actually moved most aggressively on the ground to strike land deals with foreign agro-business, chiefly because its dictatorial government takes a heavy-handed approach to package large plots of land for lease or sale to outsiders. Given the challenges of Ethiopia’s terrain and climate (and the high cost and low levels of irrigation), serious doubts exist over whether foreign agro-investors can earn a profit on anything other than greenhouse-dominated horticulture. Rather than becoming a new way of pillaging African resources, foreign-owned farms in Ethiopia may merely become “money pits,” the folly of arrogant Chinese and Petro-Arab backers. But the outlook is rosier perhaps in West Africa, making the new report of investments in Ghana by Indian capitalists intriguing. Ghana has much idle land, and especially good prospects for large-scale growing in the under-used grasslands north and south of the provincial northern capital of Tamele. When I visited Ghana last fall, I learned of Brazilian efforts to establish corporate plantations in the eastern part of the country,where irrigated water could be delivered from the Volta River. Now the entry of investors from India reinforces the idea that Ghana my become an African breadbasket. The drama of how, when and why Africa can become a global food exporter is one of the most fascinating and unexpected narratives in rural development the world over.