By Franklin Cudjoe

Sunday, April 13, 2008

It’s tricks galore in Zimbabwe’s beleaguered polls.

It is obvious that Mugabe lost the election, but the vain pride preventing him from conceding to Morgan Tsvangirai means all known forms of common sense should be sacrificed, even if the outcome is violent.

Shockingly, Tsvangirai is yet to learn the rudiments of the game.

He has taken his plea for a declaration of the results into the same den — the Zimbabwean High Court — supervised by Mugabe.

Could it be that the Movement for Democratic Change knows that Mugabe is baiting them to demonstrate in order to prepare a country over which he has no moral sway, for martial law?

This article is also publised in The Times.

By Alec van Gelder and Franklin Cudjoe

Wednesday, April 9, 2008

Activists have been trying for years to bring down the pharmaceutical industry. Their “patients not patents” campaign has a simplistic appeal but will only make things worse for the poor, as well as distracting attention from the real causes of ill health: poverty and corruption.

The patents that protect today’s innovations and drive research and development to create tomorrow’s life-saving treatments are under threat at a forthcoming World Health Organisation meeting. Ahmed Ogwell, of Kenya’s Ministry of Health, a big player in the meeting, claims that drug production, backed by intellectual property protection, “has failed quite dramatically in Africa (...) that is why the disease burden is in fact probably increasing in some areas.”

Rejoice Ngwenya, Harare Zimbabwe

Sunday, April 6, 2008

The diabolical context with which African ruling elites generally perceive democratic processes is currently on the manifest in Zimbabwe. Outgoing president Robert Mugabe's egotistical clinging to power, nine days after two million Zimbabweans showed him the red card only confirms speculations by ' Western detractors' that left to our own devices, we Africans can never get the model of good governance right. Among other paranoid claims, Mugabe is questioning the credibility of the Zimbabwe Election Committee (ZEC), staffed and literally owned by his men - Chairman Justice George Chiweshe and CEO Lovemore Sekeramayi - in their ability to TALLY votes!

Saturday, April 5, 2008

Africa is fast gaining notoriety for running flawed elections. Cameroun, Nigeria, Kenya and Zimbabwe have exhibited the most atrocious violations of citizen's right to freely choose who should direct their desires. Many countries on the continent are awaiting their fate as elections are planned for the end of 2008. Ghana, an oasis of peace and tranquility is one such country. Are Ghanaians waiting for the ominous nemesis visited upon by leaders of the aforementoned countries? Or would Ghanaians warn their presidential hopefuls to literally, store water to put out their potential burning beards?

AfricanLiberty.org editor and IMANI's Executive Director, Franklin Cudjoe speaks again to TV Africa's host of "Matters Arising", Dr. Niyi Bi Alarbi, one time Speech Writer of Ghana's Current President. The other discussant is the Director of Public Affiars of the National Council on Civic Education. This is the fourth TV Africa apearance in three weeks.

Also, AfricanLiberty.org contributor and IMANI's Director of Development, Bright Simons continues to urge civil discourse over political invectives on Ghana's most popular local language programme, "OMAN YI MU NSEM"( translated, National Issues). This is the third TV Africa appearance in one month.

Please listen to audio here.

Rejoice Ngwenya, Harare, Zimbabwe

Friday, April 4, 2008

As the drama of Zimbabwe's landmark March 29 election unfolds, Dianne Kohler Banard, Member of Parliament and spokesperson of the Democratic Alliance (DA) of South Africa stated that it was impossible for Mugabe's ZANUpf to win elections in a country that was very angry with his failed economic policies. In plain words, Ms Kohler Barnard said Mugabe had rigged the outcome of the elections in his favour.

This bold statement not only flies directly in the face of the head of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) Election Observer Team, but also adds to the chorus of protests from most Civic Sector Organisations who already have condemned the just ended election as another expensive way of dignifying outgoing president (or incoming?) Robert Mugabe's illegitimate hold onto power.

Wednesday, March 26, 2008

The opinions in this treatise are interpretations by Rejoice Ngwenya, facilitator/discussant and NOT the official positions of either ZNCC or FNF. Dagny Taggart in Ayn Rand's 'Atlas Shrugged' says: "Don't ever get angry at a man for stating the truth."

Dollarisation may be a strange term for continental Africans who have never experienced hyperinflation of One Hundred Thousand Percentage Points, but to members of the Zimbabwe National Chamber of Commerce [ZNCC], the word evokes familiar echoes of despair. In this landlocked Southern African country that shares borders with South Africa, Mozambique, Zambia and Botswana, the American Dollar, known popularly as The USA, is competing for legal and illegal circulation in daily transactions. ZNCC members, bankers, industrialists, academics, economists and interested citizens disagree on the acceptability of 'dollarisation' in an economy that has contracted by almost Seventy Percent since year 2000.

Accra, Ghana, Tuesday, March 25, 2008  

March 25, 2008 - The Atlas Economic Research Foundation announced that IMANI Center for Policy and Education (Accra, Ghana) is the only African think tank among its first class of recipients of Dorian & Antony Fisher Venture Grants.

More than 180 think tanks competed for the grants in this program, but only nine were selected to receive up to $100,000 from Atlas over the next three years: