Oil Contracts: How to Read and Understand them
A couple of weeks ago I attended the launch of Oil Contracts: How to Read and Understand them, a BookSprints book by OpenOil, a Berlin-based energy consultancy and publishing house. They basically got ten people with different expertise on the oil sector – corporate lawyers, energy activists, government negotiators – together in a house for… Read More »
Loomnie’s Spotify Playlist
I’ve created a Spotify playlist of most of the music I’ve ever blogged about. I will keep updating it.
Biafra and humanitarian imperialism*
As we are reminded by Chinua Achebe of the atrocities that led to the Biafra War, and the horror that the war was, we should also not forget the era that it heralded – that of humanitarianism. From a 2010 article New Yorker article by Philip Gourevitch: Since Biafra, humanitarianism has become the idea, and… Read More »
The Economist interview on Boko Haram
The Africa editor of The Economist talks to Lizzy Donnelly of Chatham House on Boko Haram. I mostly agree with her, mainly because she made sure to express the uncertainties about Boko Haram, the disagreement among ‘Nigeria watchers’ and ‘analysts’ on the group, and the fact that there is so much that is not known… Read More »
What is making me happy today – Rokia Traoré’s Zen (live)
This is Rokia Traoré’s wikipedia page. This is her website.
Reviews of Achebe’s There Was a Country: A Personal History of Biafra
First the conclusion of this ‘review’ (really, it is a summary of what the ‘reviewer’ likes in the book; and such a word as review should ideally not be used for it. If, however, we choose to call it a review, we should add that it is at best anodyne) by Noo Saro-Wiwa: The final… Read More »
Drug trafficking and usage in Africa
Ken Opalo has an excellent article on drug trafficking in Africa: The problem of drug trafficking in Africa is not merely a law enforcement concern. Firstly, it is a threat to the development and consolidation of important state institutions, especially the region’s judiciaries and security agencies. In many of the African states that have been… Read More »
Three Nigerian states fight over a newly-developed oil field
On August 30, president Goodluck Jonathan flew by helicopter to Aguleri Otu in Anambra state, in south-east Nigeria, to commission the construction of the country’s first privately-owned refinery and declare Anambra Nigeria’s tenth oil-producing state. Hours into the festivities, two bordering states, Kogi and Enugu, issued public statements claiming that the oilfields, OPL 915 and… Read More »
A Southasian journalist discovers the limits of Berlin’s presumed enlightenment
My friend Hani Yousuf: A few weeks ago I met a pleasant Austrian woman at a party in a bar in Prenzlauerberg, the formerly East Berlin area now home to the young, professional and cool. It was a weeknight, lights in the bar were violet and dim and conversation was possible. We were celebrating a… Read More »