Africa

In his latest article for Metro U.N., Karl Kaiser, Senior Associate with the Belfer Center's Project on Europe and the Transatlantic Relationship, shares his view on the impact of increased migration and refugee movements on Europe.

Sandri Gozi, Italian Undersecretary of State for European Affairs, joined the Future of Diplomacy Project on November 1 for a discussion titled “Italy, the EU and the US: A Conversation on Transatlantic Challenges.”

The Right Honourable Douglas Alexander offered his views on European security in a discussion moderated by FDP Executive Director Cathryn Cluver.

Alliances between local combatants and neighboring rulers played a crucial role in the Congo Wars. Yet the transnational dimensions of the conflicts remain understudied. Case studies reveal that the rulers of Angola, Rwanda, Sudan, Uganda, and Zimbabwe intervened in Congo to secure their own political survival. They forged alliances to thwart domestic rebels supported by foreign rulers or to gain access to resources that could ensure the loyalty of domestic elites.

"The rise of political Islam in failed states is one of the most pressing security concerns in the world today. Given the increasingly tense interaction between the United States and Islamic countries, such as Pakistan and Iran, the potential for new Islamic regimes emerging out of failed states in Africa, Asia and the Middle East could add a notable degree of uncertainty to future international relations," writes Aisha Ahmad, a research fellow with the Belfer Center's International Security Program/Program on Religion in International Affairs.

The Index of African Governance, produced at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government, ranks all 53 African countries according to their ability to provide good governance for their inhabitants. The full Index report illustrates the enormous variety of governance performance on the continent. Mauritius, the Seychelles, Cape Verde, and Botswana are the four best governed countries this year, as they were in last year's annually produced Index, then called the Ibrahim Index of African Governance. Tunisia, Ghana, Algeria, Namibia, South Africa, and São Tomé and Príncipe round out the top ten best overall performers.

This 2009 Index of African Governance measures the degree to which...five categories of political goods [are] provided within Africa's fifty-three (forty-eight in prior Indexes) countries. By comprehensively measuring the performance of government in this manner, that is, by measuring governance, the Index is able to offer a report card on the accomplishments of each government for the years being investigated-2000 and 2002 (for baseline indications) and 2005, 2006, and 2007 (the last years with reasonably complete available data for nearly all African nation-states). For those analysts who would like separately to explore the performance of countries on various aspects of governance, the Index includes scores in each of the five categories.