Opinion Briefing: Achieving Gains in Africa; Attention to infrastructure needs may help with "bottom-up" approach.
Byline: Bob Tortora Synopsis: With the Obama administration saying it will take "a 'bottom-up' approach to ensuring that America remains a positive force in the world," Gallup Polls conducted across sub-Saharan Africa suggest that foreign aid directed at infrastructure needs, in addition to health, would be well-received....

Emerging Capital Partners Sells Stake in Leading Producer of African Agricultural Commodities.
Exit from SOMDIAA Group represents 2x initial investment WASHINGTON, Jan. 14 /PRNewswire/ -- Emerging Capital Partners (ECP), an international private equity firm focused on investing across the African continent, today announced the sale of its entire minority position in SOMDIAA SA, a leading producer of sugar, flour...

CNPC breaks ground on Chad and Niger refineries.
CNPC, parent company of PetroChina (SH: 601857), inaugurated construction of new refineries in N'Djamena, capital of Chad, and in Chad's neighboring Niger, respectively on October 26th & 27th, 2008. CNPC and Chad signed the refinery construction deal in September 2007 on a 60:40 basis. The joint venture...

48th Independence Anniversary of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
SITUATED in the West African sub-region, bordered by the Republics of Niger, Chad, and Benin, the Federal Republic of Nigeria is blessed with abundant natural resources, including rich oil reserves, a long coastline that makes it a maritime power, and vast arable land for agricultural, industrial, and commercial activities....

National Day of the Central African Republic.
TODAY is the National Day of the Central African Republic (CAR). The CAR is a landlocked country in Central Africa. It borders Chad in the north, Sudan in the east, the Republic of the Congo and the Democratic Republic of the Congo in the south, and Cameroon...

Progress on banana trade row boosts struggling WTO talks.
"There is very substantial progress on bananas,'' said Peter Power, a spokesman for EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson after a seventh day of painstaking negotiations at the World Trade Organization (WTO). The world's biggest economies are trying to break a deadlock in the WTO's Doha talks for...

Violence against women in armed conflict.
Excerpted from a fact sheet prepared by WILPF The U.S. Bureau of Population, Refugee and Migration asserts that gender-based violence is a feature of virtually every recently concluded and current armed conflict. Whether women are engaged in armed conflict as military personnel, political leaders, medical/ aide workers,...

Mauritania.
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] IN AUGUST, THE FIRST DEMOCRATICALLY elected president of Mauritania, Sidi Ould Cheikh Abdallahi, was overthrown in a coup organised by renegade soldiers led by General Mohammed Ould Abdelaziz. The prime minister, Yahia Ould Ahmed El-Waqef, was also detained, and at the time of writing, the...

Nile Valley wasn't the only route out of Africa.
* Nile Valley wasn't the only route out of Africa: Contrary to the widely accepted theory that early humans dispersed from sub-Saharan Africa via the Nile Valley, new research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences indicates that a series of long-buried river channels may have...

Many African Muslims Give High Marks to U.S. Leadership; Three-quarters of Muslims in Mali, Senegal approve.
Byline: Magali Rheault and Dalia Mogahed Synopsis: Approval of U.S. leadership among Muslims living in sub-Saharan Africa is higher than approval among residents living in the Middle East North Africa (MENA) region. WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Approval of U.S. leadership among Muslims living in sub-Saharan Africa...