Elizabeth Palchik Allen's blog

If you only think of genocide when you hear the name "Rwanda," it's time to think again.

Today, Rwanda is moving forward, fervently set on rebranding itself into one of Africa's most investment-friendly havens. And it appears to have some of America's most recognizable names in business in its corner. A just-published article in Fast Company counts the CEOs of Starbucks and Costco as two of the Rwanda's most influential supporters, along with the likes of Google CEO Eric Schmidt, former British PM Tony Blair, and Pastor Rick Warren of "Purpose-Driven" fame. All seem to praise the Rwandan government -- and especially President Paul Kagame -- for being serious about making the country's business climate as streamlined and free of bureaucratic hassles as possible, which is certainly an anomaly in much of the developing world. (Registering a business in Rwanda apparently takes less than 48 hours.)

An article in Fortune called "Why CEOs love Rwanda" offers this money quote from Chicago financier Dan Cooper (who is credited with introducing Kagame to Costco CEO Jim Sinegal):

We came away saying, this is the most undervalued ‘stock' on the continent and maybe in the world.  Here's an African nation that's reaching out, not to governments so much, but to corporate America.  They want to work.  They want U.S. business to bring innovation to their country."

But is this too good to be true? The country's new model of economic development is an interesting one; it's almost as if Kagame has torn a page out of Beijing's handbook. While Kagame can be credited with cracking down hard on government corruption and creating a competent administration in the country's capital of Kigali, there's always the problem of restricted political rights and civil liberties, which critics of the regime never fail to point out. The issue is certainly important, especially given Rwanda's long history of political violence.

But that said, the country's clearly moving forward. And apparently, the business world isn't the only one taking notice. Last year, the United States signed a bilateral investment treaty with Rwanda -- the first such treaty signed between the U.S. and any Sub-Saharan African country in almost a decade. 

Fifteen years after genocide, this is Rwanda rising.

Hat tip: Africamusings

GIANLUIGI GUERCIA/AFP/Getty Images

In an interview with the Financial Times, former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan officially came out in favor of temporary bank nationalization as a possible solution to the current economic crisis:

It may be necessary to temporarily nationalise some banks in order to facilitate a swift and orderly restructuring. I understand that once in a hundred years this is what you do."

This is a big admission for Greenspan. But it seems as if the erstwhile devotee of Ayn Rand has been reassessing his ideas as of late. This past October, during testimony for the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Greenspan said,

This modern risk-management paradigm held sway for decades. The whole intellectual edifice, however, collapsed in the summer of last year."

Well, as Martin Wolf recently wrote in FT, "We are all Keynesians now" -- even the high priest of neoliberal economics himself. It's a new day.

TIM SLOAN/AFP/Getty Images

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote enthusiastically about the tri-government military operation that Uganda, Congo, and Southern Sudan were undertaking to root out the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA). Unfortunately, since then, things haven't been going well. The LRA managed to survive the initial military onslaught, and went on to massacre as many as 900 civilians since the military offensive began in mid-December. Joseph Kony, the group's notorious leader, is still alive and well. (While the LRA's deputy commander is set to surrender soon, it was Kony's death or capture that was the main point of the endeavor.)

 

Yet, just when this military venture was about to fizzle out with its primary objective still not met, an interesting piece of news, courtesy of the New York Times, has now thrown the operation back into the spotlight. On Feb. 7, the Times reported that the United States, through the Pentagon's newly minted Africa Command (or Africom), was heavily involved in the planning of the operation -- supplying intelligence, supplies, and more than a million dollars in fuel aid. According to the Times:

The Ugandan government asked the American Embassy in Kampala, Uganda's capital, for help, and the request was sent up the chain of command in November to President Bush, who personally authorized it, a former senior Bush administration official said."

Given the number of civilian massacres that have occurred since the start of the operation -- massacres that happened because no one adequately secured the villages in the area -- this could potentially be embarrassing for Africom and the Pentagon.

I asked Vince Crawley, chief of public information at Africom, to comment on the claims made by the New York Times. He responded by emphasizing that the United States was involved only in an advisory capacity and that "this wasn't a U.S. plan that Uganda carried out. It was a Ugandan plan that would have taken place regardless of U.S. assistance." With regard to the securing of villages in the area, Crawley said,

There was dialogue on how to protect the areas. There was discussion. Again, it's not a U.S. operation. ... Fundamentally, it's not appropriate for us to comment on the strategies and tactics of other nations. That's not what partners do."

Even with U.S. help, the LRA won't be easy to stamp out. Check out our new list of five other rebel groups around the world that have demonstrated remarkable staying power.

TONY KARUMBA/AFP/Getty Images

Tomorrow, India will unveil a prototype of the new "Sakshat" laptop, a $20 machine that is reportedly equipped with wireless connectivity and 2GB of memory. If this laptop is indeed commercially viable -- which is a big "if" given the current financial climate -- the Sakshat's bargain basement price will almost certainly undercut the $100 educational laptop initiative launched by former MIT computer scientist Nicolas Negroponte, whose One Laptop Per Child program left Indian bureaucrats a little chilly in the past.

The big question is, will the Sakshat go the way of the Tata Nano? Just today, Reuters India reported that fourth quarter losses have caused the Indian car company Tata to table its rollout of the $2,500 Nano for the foreseeable future. Given that the Sakshat laptop currently has no commercial manufacturing partner -- only a prototype of the machine goes on display at the National Mission on Education tomorrow -- perhaps Negroponte can rest easy. At least for now.

Even setting aside Turkey's record with its Armenian and Kurdish minorities for a moment, it's a little rich for Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to be so aghast at the idea of sharing a stage with a human rights abuser.

Almost exactly a year before Erdogan's outburst at Davos, in which he lambasted Israeli President Shimon Peres over Israel's actions in Gaza, he was literally rolling out the red carpet for Sudan's genocidal president and indicted war criminal Omar al-Bashir in Ankara.

So when did "killing people" become a problem for him?

Laurent Nkunda's arrest isn't the only recent major development in central Africa. Beginning in mid-December, the governments of Uganda, Congo, and Southern Sudan began a significant joint military operation to root out the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), an insurgent group out of northern Uganda whose leaders have outstanding arrest warrants issued by the International Criminal Court.

The LRA has a tumultuous 20-year history of not just destabilizing northern Uganda (which currently has about 1.5 million citizens in camps for internally displaced persons because of the group's activity), but also destabilizing southern Sudan, eastern Congo, and the Central African Republic. In the past few days alone, new reports of LRA attacks have trickled out of Southern Sudan, where some members of the group fled after their Congolese hideout was bombed by the tri-government military venture.

What is striking about this military operation -- which, so far, has failed to kill the group's notorious leader, Joseph Kony -- was the regional approach that the three countries took, especially in an area that's not exactly known for its international cooperation (particularly in the aftermath of the Congo War). True, Uganda's army and air force supplied the bulk of the manpower, but even the modest involvement of the Congolese and Southern Sudanese armies at the periphery of the operation is a step in the right direction. While the outcome of the current military operation is still not clear, greater regional coordination almost certainly holds promise for future efforts -- both military and diplomatic -- between the three conflict-rife states.

Over the next weeks and months, anyone who is interested in a political resolution to the crisis in Darfur would do well to pay attention to the actions of the Sudanese government in Khartoum and the semi-autonomous Government of Southern Sudan with regard to the LRA and other rebel groups in the region. Much has been made of the connections between the LRA and Khartoum, which covertly funded the the group's terrorist activity in southern Sudan during the country's most recent civil war. Indeed, whether this new regionalism will bear tangible fruit, only time will tell.

Meanwhile, the region's stability and the lives of possibly thousands of people hang in the blance.