Africa

Articles

Bosses Old & New

In West Africa, French colonialism officially ended in the 1960s. Six decades later, neocolonialism lives on. These days, America is the world’s preeminent imperial power and NATO its most powerful tool. In Cambodia, French colonists are long gone. Military chiefs and their rich clients rule the roost, much to the detriment of biodiverse ecosystems.


Poisonous Legacies

Uranium mining in Niger: a filthy, toxic business. Fifty years after the end of America’s war on Vietnam, traces of US chemical weapons linger. And, the Anthropocene. A geologist talks about humanity’s transformation of Planet Earth.




Green Planet Monitor Podcast

“War is not healthy for children and other living things.” It isn’t healthy for Planet Earth’s climate system either. The cradle of crop diversity here on Planet Earth – Ethiopia. And, Israel-Palestine – a discreet toponym, six syllables tripping off the tongue.


Covid-19 in Tanzania

As Covid-19 sweeps around the planet, news has focused on places where death tolls have been high: Italy, Mexico, Brazil, the US and — of course — China, where the pandemic began. Early predictions about the potential for outbreaks in Africa have yet to materialize. Whether swift lock downs or non-reporting is the reason is unclear. I spoke with GPM correspondent Josephat Mwanzi, in the Tanzanian capital, Dar es Salaam.






Ghosts of Hate Radio

This coming spring will mark the twenty-second anniversary of the Rwandan genocide. An estimated eight hundred thousand were killed by ethnic Hutu extremists armed with knives, hoes and machetes. Over the radio, venom flowed.






City of Peace & Traffic Jams

https://media.blubrry.com/thegreenbluesshow/dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/314577/GPM%20III/Audio%20stories/DarEsSalaam.mp3

Dar es Salaam … City of Peace on Tanzania’s Indian Ocean coast. Driving a car into, out of or around the city, or commuting in one of the Tanzanian capital’s jam-packed dala-dalas, is anything but a peaceful enterprise.


African Lion Down

Some thoughts on Colonel Muammar Gadaffi. Under Gaddafi’s autocratic rule Libya improved greatly, especially for the poor and women, with a distribution of wealth hitherto unknown in any country on the continent. But he was a dictator.


Bumbire Island – Part 4

https://media.blubrry.com/thegreenbluesshow/dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/314577/GPM%20III/Audio%20stories/Bumbire_Josie.mp3

In this final chapter in our series, Christine Hamilton and I head off to a fishing settlement called Lushonga, in search of a woman named Josie, who suffers from an advanced case of AIDS.



Bumbire Island – Part 2

http://media.blubrry.com/thegreenbluesshow/dl.dropbox.com/u/314577/GPM%20III/Audio%20stories/Bumbire_Christine.mp3

Bumbire Island sits on the northern tip of a sliver of an archipelago in southwest Lake Victoria, in Tanzania, East Africa. Nature on and around Bumbire is gorgeous—but the hardscrabble fishing camps scattered along its shores—and those of nearby rocky islets—are a different story.