Africa's AIDS crisis in context: 'how the poor are dying'

The 13th International Conference on AIDS held in Durban, South Africa, highlighted the social catastrophe unfolding on the African continent. The meeting took place in the country with the largest number of people infected by HIV - the virus that causes AIDS - on the continent that is home to 70% of the world's HIV-infected population. The cruel irony of the unfolding human tragedy is that Africa is also the least equipped region in the world to deal with the multiplicity of challenges posed by the HIV virus. Drawn from ongoing research in southern Africa, this article charts the relationship between poverty, HIV prevalence and the politics of global response.     

Africa's prospects and South Africa's leadership potential in the emerging markets century

This article examines Africa's role in an evolving international system where powerful emerging markets, such as bric, together with established powers are shaping economic trajectories. The specific focus is on South Africa as an aspiring leader on the African continent, and on its potential for becoming an emerging market shaping the global order together with bric and the West. It is unclear whether a changing global economy in which the postcolonial world plays a greater role will result in improved developmental prospects for Africans as African countries gradually reorient themselves from the West to the South, or whether relations with emerging markets will resemble neo-colonial ties with the West. South Africa's structural weakness, stemming from serious domestic problems of a social, political and economic nature, threatens to undermine its standing in Africa and its emerging market status.     

加快经济一体化推动非洲发展

许多中国人习惯于将非洲大陆看作一个整体,但在现实中非洲由53个主权国家组成,市场处于严重的分割状态,阻碍了非洲国家内部贸易的往来。独立伊始,非洲国家领导人就认识到,仅靠本国单薄的经济实力,难以满足发展民族经济的需要。只有把区域范围内分散的力量联合起来,开发内部资源,互通有无,进行合作,才能克服困难,解决一些最迫切的经济问题。于是,     

Twilight of impunity for Africa's presidential criminals

This article tracks the fate of six former African tyrants all accused of crimes against humanity: Charles Taylor; Mengistu Haile Mariam; Hissène Habré; Idi Amin, Mobutu Sese Seko and Jean‐Bédel Bokassa. It examines the politics that have determined their fate and finds that, despite changes in international law and opinion since the Cold War, impunity still prevails. Western governments are still willing to trump justice with politics; and African presidents still offer solidarity to club members. For recent tyrants, life is only a little more difficult than it was for older ones. Yet their future may be tougher as the globalisation of justice begins to bite. None will be comfortable with the powers granted the International Criminal Court; nor with western disregard of state sovereignty as it targets heads of government still in office who are deemed guilty of international crime. Even the new African Union has abandoned the doctrine of non‐interference.     

South Africa's emergence as a middle power

This article seeks to explain South Africa's ostensible emergence as a middle power. It makes the case for the use of a Coxian-based critical theory perspective, which relates the interrelationship between change at the level of world order, the nature of production and the social forces operative in the middle power's state-societal complex to explain South Africa's increasingly active role in international affairs. Playing a mediatory role helps the South African state make diverse foreign policy goals more compatible and it also goes some way in thwarting criticism levelled at its foreign policy in the state-societal domain. Contrary to earlier theorising about middle powers, this article supports a more recent contention that middle powers act in their own (ie dominant societal) interests. The value of such a perspective is illustrated in the light of current debates about the apparent incongruity of South African foreign policy.     

Going South: capitalist crisis,systemic crisis,civilisational crisis

This article argues that the current protracted and severe financial and economic crisis is only one aspect of a larger multidimensional set of simultaneous and interacting crises on a global scale. The article constructs an overarching framework of analysis of this unique conjecture of global crises. The three principal crisis aspects are: an economic crisis of (over) accumulation of capital; a world systemic crisis (which includes a global centre-shift in the locus of production, growth and capital accumulation), and a hegemonic transition (which implies long term changes in global governance structures and institutions); and a worldwide civilisational crisis, situated in the sociohistorical structure itself, encompassing a comprehensive environmental crisis and the consequences of a lack of correspondence and coherence in the material and ideational structures of world order. In these ways, the global system is now `going south'. All three main aspects of the global crisis provoke and require commensurate radical social and political responses and self-protective measures, not only to restore systemic stability but to transform the world system.     

The Canadian Government Response to Africa's Refugee Problem

La Côte d’Ivoire a longtemps fait figure de pays marginal et d’importance secondaire sur la scène islamique ouest-africaine, du fait notamment du statut minoritaire de l’Islam — une réalité qui se situe désormais moins au plan démographique qu’au plan politique — et de la discrétion des ordres soufis. De manière contrastée, depuis les années 1990, la société musulmane ivoirienne et sa culture religieuse “réformiste,” portée par une élite “moderne” centrée sur Abidjan, gagnent progressivement en influence dans la sous-région et au-delà. Cet article explore les processus socioéconomiques, politiques et culturels à l’oeuvre dans cette transformation, ainsi que l’interface entre le local et le global dans l’Islam ivoirien. Les migrations internationales vers la Côte d’Ivoire sont l’objet d’une attention particulière, dans la mesure où les nombreux immigrants ouest-africains, pour la plupart musulmans, ont pu jouer à l’étranger un rôle de traducteurs culturels dans la transmission des idées et du modus operandi propres aux réformistes ivoiriens. L’émigration de musulmans ivoiriens en Occident et en particulier aux Etats-Unis est aussi prise en compte. L’article se demande en outre pourquoi l’élite réformiste ivoirienne s’est efforcée de nouer des contacts avec des organismes islamiques internationaux basés hors du monde arabe et de l’Iran et comment les échanges avec les musulmans d’Occident ont marqué son développement de manière décisive et originale. Ces mouvements d’hommes et d’idées ont contribué au dynamisme local de l’Islam ivoirien et à son rayonnement transnational en Afrique de l’Ouest francophone et dans les milieux de la diaspora africaine musulmane aux Etats-Unis. La conclusion situe cette mondialisation de l’Islam ivoirien dans une perspective historique.     

非洲纳入世界体系的代价及后果

非洲是世界上最贫穷的地区,主流经济学界将其贫穷落后的原因归结于非洲政府经济政策的不力和传统农业结构的顽固不化。其实造成非洲贫弱的经济特性早在非洲纳入世界体系的过程中就已经形成了。     

南非抱“金砖”意义非凡

对南非而言,刚刚过去的2010年可谓＂双喜临门＂——年中,在全世界的注目下成功举办世界杯足球赛,令世人刮目相看;年底,收到来自中国的＂圣诞礼物＂——如愿以偿成为＂金砖国家＂一员。