Recently in Nigeria Category

By Patrick Smith, Editor Africa Confidential

There is a worsening crackdown on journalists in many regions of the world, especially Africa, as governments and businesses struggle to deal with harsher economic conditions.

One of the latest victims in Africa is Ngota Ngota Germain, editor of the weekly Cameroon Express, who died in detention on 23 April in Yaoundé's Kodengui gaol. Along with two other journalists, Serge Sabouang and Robert Mintya, Ngota had been investigating allegations of corruption against Secretary General in the Presidency Laurent Esso and the state oil company.

There was no disguising the buzz in the room  this week, when Paul Collier (author of The Bottom Billion, the 2007 classic) stood up to speak on the theme of "Yes Africa Can" under the glittering chandeliers of the World Bank's 12th floor Gallery.

Collier believes that Africa, coastal West Africa in particular, is already undergoing a transformation which will turn it into the world's next low cost powerhouse of manufacturing.

He enthuses that some of the best places for economic growth in Africa are the regions emerging from conflict. He cites places like Southern Sudan, where the diaspora has been harnessed to invest and help guarantee that investments do not simply vanish into thin air. PeaceDiv.com

Collier wasn't invited to talk about threats to the burgeoning African renaissance from the continent's authoritarian leaders, ethnic conflict, the spread of internet censorship, the vicious crackdowns on freedom of expression and the narrowing space for civil society in many countries etc. He was there to make the case that Africa is booming and he pointed out that  experienced European and American investors (who lost money in the last African commodities boom, are missing the boat this time).

Chatting afterwards he dismissed as overblown, the fears that the Chinese driven investment boom, (vast amounts of money without strings attached for transparency, human rights, environment) was such a bad thing: "Something is better than nothing in many of these countries..." he told me.

An interactive map in Mother Jones Magazine of the celebrity recolonization of Africa.

OVERSIZED SHADES have replaced pith helmets, writes By Dave Gilson in Mother Jones Magazine, but the new scramble for Africa has its share of adventurers, would-be saviors, and even turf battles. As Madonna's publicist explains, "She's focusing on Malawi. South Africa is Oprah's territory."

The map below takes a lighter look at the sometimes serious, sometimes silly business of celebrity altruism. For more on how Africa became the hottest continent for A-list do-gooders like Bono and Brangelina, see here. And if you're looking for a more sober approach, check out Mother Jones' recent package on human rights.

Nigerian journalists are reeling after a spate of brutal killings. Prominent African journalists killed in the year include the Assistant Editor of Nigeria's The Guardian newspaper, Bayo Ohu; the Managing Editor of a South African Newspaper, City Press, Steve Dlamini, and editors of Somalia radio station, Radio HornAfrik. In Nigeria six journalists have been murdered recently including Efenji Efenji a former reporter of African Independent Television (AIT) who was stabbed to death in front of his family as a valentines Day event. His gruesome murder has led to some soul searching.

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has said that 136 journalists were imprisoned globally in 2009. Of thaat figure, 25 journalists were imprisoned in sub-Saharan Africa for their work, and nearly 90 percent of these journalists were detained without charges in secret detention facilities.

Sunday's killings in Jos, were an especially vicious expression of long-running hostilities between Christians and Muslims in Nigeria, writes the New York Times' Adam Nossiter in a vivid report from the scene. Jos and the region around it are on the fault line where the volatile and poor Muslim north and the Christian south meet. In the past decade, some 3,000 people have been killed in interethnic, interreligious violence in this fraught zone. The pattern is familiar and was seen as recently as January: uneasy coexistence suddenly explodes into killing, amplified for days by retaliation. While Nossiter's chilling account of the cold blooded testimony of the killers as they sit in police captivity is compelling, he does not delve into the causes of the conflict, beyond point to the obvious religious divide in Nigeria.

Hundreds of people have been cut down near the central city of Jos, when men suspected to be Hausa-Fulani fighters, descended from the hills from where they launched into the villages at about 2am. Nigeria's acting President Goodluck Jonathan is due to meet with security chiefs to discuss the recent clashes involving the Muslim herders and Christian villagers. A security meeting in Abuja is begging held as authorities in Jos bury hundreds of hacked bodies of victims, mostly women and children, in mass graves. A dusk-to-dawn curfew imposed in the aftermath of the January riots in which over 350 died, meant there should have been a military presence in the area at that time. Some of the fighters were said to have positioned themselves at strategic entrances to the villages, while others went in and began to set houses on fire. Those who made to escape were butchered while others were shot.

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• Ethnic Violence in Nigeria Kills 500, Officials Say (nytimes.com)

Acting Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan has not been elected, nor did he seize power in a coup, unlike so many of his predecessors. The mumbling and mild-mannered academic who wears a black fedora has emerged at the top of Nigeria's tough-guy political heap.

Nigerian police and military units carried out extra-judicial killings last year in the aftermath of clashes with members of a Muslim group in the north of the country, video footage appears to confirm.

By Paul Vallely Why are we asking this now? Upto 265 people are reported to have died in the Nigerian city of Jos after fighting between Muslims and Christians. Calm has now been restored but only after a 24-hour curfew imposed by the government which has sent soldiers armed with machine guns to patrol the streets in pick-up trucks. But there are reports that the violence has now spread to Pankshin, 60 miles to the south-east.