The Effect of Oil in Africa

After surfing the internet for different topics for my last few posts, I began to find a lot of really interesting articles from online newspapers from all over the world on the general topic of the effect of oil in Africa. The first one that popped up in Google Web was a series of articles from the Boston Globe.

The first thing that in the series is an audio slideshow about the relationship between America and Africa over oil. I wasn't able to upload it to the blog, but it is interesting.

The second item in the series is an article about oil spills in Nigeria. The article is really interesting and tells the story of the people effected by the spills. It also has a some interesting charts that show where Nigeria stands in the production of oil. According to the chart, Canada is the top producer and Nigeria is 5th, under Mexico, Venezuela, and Saudi Arabia.

The third part of the series is an article about how profitable oil is in the Congo and begins with this picture about the fisherman in the Congo. It is interesting to see how this article connects to what we talked about in class today. The Congolese government actually made money from this deal even though the oil was being sent to the United States. It would be interesting to find out more about the oil policies in different countries and how they differ. Maybe the Congo has a better policy than Nigeria....

The final article listed in the series is about Angola. Like much of what we have talked about in class, the article talks about how the people in Angola are not benefitting from the oil wealth. Instead it says that there is a legacy of war and corruption that should not be there. This would be another interesting read.

Voter Fraud in Africa

I decided to look up voter fraud in Africa because of the upcoming elections here in the U.S.. I found an interesting article from the New York Times about how opposition in Ethiopia stopped inquiries into voter fraud there. After reading the article it sounds like there was a lot of violence both on the part of the political parties involved and the police that were trying to investigate the actions of the political parties.

I found another article about voter fraud in Zambia from the Fairfax Digital and the Sydney Morning Herald. This article mentions the opinions of voters in Zambia and tells about their suspicions that the police are involved in rigging the elections. The article also talks about the fears that people in political parties have about what will happen when the polls close, fearing that there will be violence. It alsos quotes one of the men running for office and he says that he will not accept a loss if he suspects vote fraud.

A final article that I found is about the elections in Zimbabwe from CNN. It has pitures of the current president (on the left) who has led the country for nearly three decades and those running against him: his former finance minister, Simba Makoni (second image on left); and Morgan Tsvangirai (bottom right)of the Movement for Democratic Change. After explaining Mugabe's position in Zimbabwe from the time that it was called Rhodesia, the article then continues to talk about how Mugabe plans to rig the election so that he can stay in power until he dies.

*If you want to see Mugabe on the campaign trail via CNN, check out the video.

Polygamy and Ancestor Stones

Because Ancestor Stones tells the stories of several children who had the same father with many wives, I was interested in finding out more about polygamy in Africa. I ended up finding a really good article through Google Scholar about Polygamy and its relationship to HIV and AIDS in Africa. I was surprised to find that the article at the beginning says that "regions with high rates of polygamy have significantly lower rates" of HIV and AIDS. It seems that it would be higher because the man is having relations with more women, however, if the families are loyal because of their religious reasons, like we saw in Xala, then it does make sense. The article says that the areas with the the greatest number of cases of HIV and AIDS are in the urban areas and then spread to rural areas. Another interesting thing that the article mentions is the different ways that HIV and AIDS are spread in patterns. One pattern talks about the spread being from homosexual or bisexual men, while another way is through heterosexual relations.

The article also has some really interesting graphs and graphics that I couldn't post up here because they are part of a PDF file, but they are definitely worth checking out. There are maps that show the spread of AIDS and HIV in certain areas and among certain tribes, and also a chart that shows the number of women affected and the number of men affected, with the number of women being much greater than the number of men.

Because I couldn't upload anything from the PDF file, I decided to find another source that shows the impact of AIDS in Africa. I thought this one was good.

I would definitely suggest checking out this article to find out more about the topic. I know that I learned a lot in the little bit that I was able to read and feel that I could learn a lot more if I was able to read it all.