Facebook and Chinese Company Cooperate on African Subsea Internet Cable

 Reuters published on 16 August 2021 an article titled "Facebook, Telcos to Extend Subsea Cable to Four Countries."

Facebook and the 2Africa consortium of companies from Africa, Europe, the Middle East, and China Mobile International are adding countries in Africa to the world's largest subsea internet cable project.  

China Works To Eradicate Malaria in Comoro Islands

Xinhua published on 24 April 2018 an article titled "Hunting Down Malaria in Comoros--Another China-Africa Story" by Yao Yuan and Wen Hao.

A team of Chinese scientists began in 2007 a program to eradicate malaria from the Comoro Islands. By 2016, malaria had been effectively eliminated from the islands of Moheli and Anjouan and is on schedule to be eliminated from Grande Comore by 2020. By any account, this is a good news story for both the Comoro Islands and China.

Somali Pirates Back in Business

The Associated Press published on 14 March 2017 an article titled "Pirates Hijack Freighter off Somalia's Coast, Officials Say" by Abdi Guled and Jon Gambrel.

Somali pirates succeeded in capturing their first large commercial vessel since the last successful hijacking in 2012. The ship was carrying fuel from Djibouti to Mogadishu. It had 8 Sri Lankan crew members who are now being held for ransom off the coast of Puntland. It was flying the flag of Sri Lanka, Liberia, or the Comoro Islands. The owners are connected to Greece or the UAE. The big question is whether this incident portends the return of pirate attacks off Somalia after a lapse of several years.

China-Africa Telecommunication Relationship

The African Journal of Information and Communication published in 2016 a study titled "China and Africa: Alternative Telecommunication Policies and Practices" by Ewan Sutherland.

The author notes that China has not exported its domestic model of competing state-owned telecommunications operators, nor have those operators followed the "going out" strategy. China has won from hardware sales in Africa, while Africans have won wider access to telecommunications, including states rejecting the Washington Consensus model.

African Union Peace Operations

I presented brief remarks on African Union (AU) peace operations at a national security seminar held by George Washington University on 7 December 2012. My remarks focus on the AU peace operations architecture and assessment of the AU's efforts so far to deal with conflict.

Click here to read the remarks.

African Union and Peacekeeping

The Institute for Security Studies (ISS) published in September 2012 a study titled From AMIB to AMISOM that looks at the African Peace and Security Architecture (APSA) of the African Union (AU). The author is Mohammud A. Hussien, a senior lecturer in international law at the Ethiopian Civil Service College. The paper covers AU efforts in the Comoro Islands, Burundi, Darfur, and Somalia.

The paper analyses some of the practices in AU-led peace missions in light of the AU normative framework in a way that informs the challenges of APSA's institutional future. While APSA is both a highly complex and an evolving legal and institutional framework, there are some critical constraints that APSA faces as it continues to provide a framework for engaging in Africa's conflicts.

Click here to read the study.