What We’re Reading: A taste of hope sends refugees back to Darfur

Feb 27th, 2012 11:28 AM UTC
By Robyn Mitchell

Senegalese opposition leader says runoff vote is ‘inevitable’ – As votes were being tallied on Monday from Senegal’s presidential election, leading opposition candidate Macky Sall declared that no candidate had gotten the necessary 50 percent, making a runoff “inevitable.” Many experts say that for current president, Abdoulaye Wade, to stay in power for an unprecedented third term, he needed to win on the first round when the opposition was split between 13 candidates. In a runoff, his chances of winning are much slimmer because the opposition will be united. (AP)

Activists rally against UNESCO prize from African ruler while thousands lack clean water – Human rights groups are urging UNESCO to abandon a prize named after Africa’s longest-ruling dictator – President of Equatorial Guinea, Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo – one they say could be tainted by some of the millions he allegedly has looted from his oil-rich but poverty-stricken country. Activists say the prize should be quashed definitively, with many asking how the president “can offer such a prize while thousands of his people live without electricity or a clean water supply.” (AP)

A Taste of Hope Sends Refugees Back to Darfur – More than 100,000 people in Darfur have left the sprawling camps where they had taken refuge for nearly a decade and headed home to their villages over the past year, “the biggest return of displaced people since the war began in 2003 and a sign that one of the world’s most infamous conflicts may have decisively cooled.” And while this represents only a small fraction of Darfur’s total displaced population, they are doing so voluntarily, UN officials say, offering one of the most concrete signs of hope. (Jeffrey Gettleman, NYT)

African droughts: Could insurance schemes help out? – Aid groups are appealing for proactive action, as Horn of Africa drought persists, arguing that insurance may be the most effective solution. As well as providing lifesaving payouts when rains are forecast to fail, insurance can also offer farmers the security to invest to boost yields by covering inputs, like seeds and fertilizer. It’s an idea that has possible applications not just in the Horn of Africa, but across much of the continent. (William Davison, CSM)

How mobile broadband can transform Africa – Dr Hamadoun Touré, secretary-general of the UN’s International Telecommunication Union, argues that information and communications technologies, including cellular devices, may “represent our best hope of accelerating progress towards meeting the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by the target date of 2015.” From improving healthcare to education, Touré points to Africa’s “near-ubiquitous mobile coverage” as a way to “break old infrastructure bottlenecks and short-circuit the traditional development cycle.” (Hamadoun Toure, CNN)

TAGS: What We're Reading