s tracking locusts or government spending, west Africa's hi-tech firms are finding new solutions to social problems In 2009, businessman Femi Akinde needed to travel quickly across Nigeria. Without immediate access to the internet, it took him a day to book a plane ticket. Finding a number to make a phone reservation took time; connecting – on erratic phone lines – even longer; and bank forms had to...
As the president of the anti-slavery organisation SOS-Esclaves , I must respond to Pieter Tesch's assertion that "there is no slavery in Mauritania" ( Comment , 7 September). I have a great deal of experience of slavery in Mauritania. It is not, as suggested, a narrative of western NGOs, despite the attempts of the Mauritanian government to portray it as such. It is a real and common phenomenon, evidenced...
s feature, there is no slavery in Mauritania ( Slavery still shackles Mauritania, 31 years after its abolition , 15 August). The article repeated the old narrative, promoted by certain Western NGOs, of "black Africans" enslaved by "Arabs": "Activists and former slaves spoke of a centuries-old practice, a relic of the trans-Sahara slave trade when Arabic-speaking Moors raided African villages, flourishing...
s Libya, it is Abdullah al-Senussi, now facing a dramatic trial in which the repression and crimes of more than four decades stand to be exposed for the first time. Just over a year since Gaddafi's overthrow by Nato-backed rebels, Libya's new government faces grave political and security challenges. But nothing is more likely to create a sense of closure than the dictator's hated spy chief and enforcer...