South Sudan: Expectation and Reality

My colleague and fellow blogger Alex Thurston has a blogosphere rundown of commentary and stories on the South Sudan, the world's newest nation. Expectations are understandably high (perhaps impossibly so) for the South to "deliver the goods" to its citizens, and to flex its autonomy, but the reality is that the South and the North will HAVE to work together for the benefit of their respective futures, at least until the South Sudanese government builds oil pipelines eastward across Ethiopia and Kenya. Over at African Arguments, Naomi Pendle reports on attitudes in Warrap State in South Sudan.

As far as attitudes in the North, I would recommend that everyone check out this documentary "Fight for the Soul of the North" on the future of the state and civil society in North Sudan. The picture is grim, and the North will require wise leadership if they want to prevent the complete collapse of the state.

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East Africa Around the Blogosphere

Greetings Azanian Sea readers,

It has been a minute since I've been in the blogging game as I had responsibilities to take care of on the home front (like finishing graduate coursework at Northwestern). But I'm back, and I hope to get back to blogging and commenting on religion, politics, culture and history in East Africa this summer, while I wade deeply into another round of Intensive Arabic in Amman, Jordan. Things are relatively quiet here, but the Syrian border is closed, Egypt and Sudan are poised for major transitions in governance, there is still unrest in Libya and Yemen and it's bizarre to think about how close we are here to the tides of revolution sweeping the region.

In East Africa, a terrible drought is sweeping the Horn of Africa. In an already destabilized region, the prospect of no rain until September could have catastrophic results for the ability of many residents to eke out a living above the margin of survival. The big question is: how much does climate change play a role in this emerging crisis? Droughts are not new in East Africa, and the region was hit hard in 2006. But the cycle of drought seems to be quickening, as Daniel Howden writes, "At the beginning of this decade the rains failed every other season and what we now see is 'perennial drought'." Climatologists and others have been warning of this situation for quite some time, but it now seems to be approaching a crisis.
The drought is likely to intensify water conflicts in the region, as well as political conflict over other resources like grazing grounds, fuel, and arable land.

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