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I recently spent some time chatting to the Zimbabwean Finance Minister Tendai Biti. We have talked, on camera, in the past and he is always candid and sometimes surprisingly honest in his interviews.
For the first time ever I made a New Year’s resolution. I resolved to spend less time with my BlackBerry.
After the Christmas break, where I managed to relax and slow down a bit, I realized how overly dependent I had become on my BlackBerry.
I was constantly checking for emails and then felt slightly bereft if there wasn’t a tranche of messages beeping. I had to wean myself off it.
The somewhat arbitrary dividing up of Africa between the European powers during the "Scramble for Africa" in the early part of the 20th century is still a sensitive issue for many on the continent. The sensitivities around the colonial divisions that created modern Africa are still manipulated for political gain in many African countries.
So Ghana has joined the club of oil producing nations. The taps have been turned on at the offshore Jubilee field.
So what does this mean for Ghana? How will ordinary Ghanaians benefit from this resource windfall?
The first concern that should be addressed is the perception that suddenly the country will become flush with petrodollars. Importantly, expectations must be managed. As those citizens in Nigeria or Angola know, the oil money often doesn't trickle down to the people.
Been there, done that.
That’s what some South Africans might be saying after watching the announcement of which countries will host the 2018 and 2022 World Cup football events.
While many here might be slightly nostalgic about their World Cup memories, others will be utterly relieved that the whole experience is over.
We have just filmed this week’s Marketplace Africa program in Braamfontein, a peripheral urban area on the outskirts of central Johannesburg.
It is quite staggering how much of Johannesburg’s inner city has changed in recent years. Juta Street, where we shot, has in the past few months blossomed into a groovy design hotspot with good coffee, an art gallery, and trendy furniture and fashion stores.
The apartments bordering this area have some of the best views of Johannesburg’s skyline and have been turned into expensive loft-style living quarters.
I am in Kenya filming Marketplace Africa. When I arrived here, the first thing I did was to turn on the television set in my hotel room and watch the local news.
KTV was running a story on how the Anti-Corruption Commission was planning to set up a “corruption curriculum” in Kenyan schools, where there would be a focus on “integrity studies.”
I was both amused and dismayed – what exactly are integrity studies?
I went into my local supermarket a last week, and lo and behold, Christmas is here!
The aisles were full of chocolates, tins of Christmas biscuits, fruit cakes and an array of hard teeth-breaking children’s sweets that are meant to fill Santa’s stocking.
Now, I know I don’t want to sound like Scrooge, but it seems that every year the commercialization of Christmas gets earlier and earlier.
There has been a bit of a tit-for-tat war going on in the South African press between two outspoken men.
One, Kenny Kunene, a nightclub owner, held a lavish 40th birthday party recently, during which sushi was reportedly served on the bodies of half-naked women and guests drank expensive imported whisky and champagne.
Leading government and African National Congress leaders attended the party, according to press reports. Other newspapers show photos of the flamboyant Kunene standing in front of his expensive sports car, which has “So What” written on the number plates.
I was sitting staring out the big windows in my 15th floor office, looking at the Johannesburg skyline and admiring the bursts of purple Jacaranda trees dotting the cityscape when my phone rang.
It was Chris Karanja, who is corporate communications manager from Kenya Airways. He phoned to point out that one of the recent interviewees on Marketplace Africa misrepresented the airline industry in Africa. The guest said that you couldn’t fly across Africa from west to east or east to west and that if you wanted to travel across Africa you would have to fly to Europe and back.