Baobab

TWO years have passed since a sex scandal toppled the former head of the IMF and one-time French presidential hopeful, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, or “DSK” as he likes to be known. On May 14th, in the same week as a trailer was released for a film based on his carnal escapades in a New York hotel (starring another infamous Frenchman, Gérard Depardieu), Mr Strauss-Kahn popped up in South Sudan to help launch his friends' little-known bank.

The global economic oracle, who has spent two years dodging the media spotlight, made an undistinguished reappearance, emerging from a white 4x4 in the dusty streets of Juba, the capital.

“I’M ENJOYING this benign neglect,” noted Liberia’s president, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, when asked to comment on the decision of her country’s media to boycott her. “I wish they will continue it for a long time,” she said.

Liberia’s press called for a blackout on coverage of the president, following comments made by the head of the Executive Protection Services, Daniel Othello Warrick, at World Press Freedom Day on May 3rd. The event, hosted by the Press Union of Liberia, was on media and security relations.

LONG before Baobab became a lowly journalist he scraped a living as a lowly academic. “If you’re so clever why aren’t you rich?” was a favourite tease of his less bookish but better-paid peers. The Africa Progress Report, prepared by an expert panel led by Kofi Annan (pictured), a former UN secretary-general, was unveiled last week at the World Economic Forum conference in Cape Town, and deals with a more wounding provocation. If Africa is so resource-rich, it asks, why are its people not better educated, its children well nourished and its adults longer-lived?

AS THE British and Somali governments co-host a conference about Somalia's future, Ahmed Soliman from the Africa Programme at Chatham House discusses the challenges the country faces

THOUGH 60% of Ivorians are under 25, the country’s politics is still firmly in the grip of old men. The president, Alassane Ouattara, is 71, while his prime minister, Daniel Kablan Duncan, soon turns 70. The leader of the ruling party’s coalition partner, Henri Konan Bédié, a former president himself, is nearly 79. So Jean-Louis Billon, the commerce minister, who is 49 this year, is a relative stripling. More to the point, he is one of the government’s few ministers who genuinely believe in the free market and liberal values.

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THERE is no shortage of economic growth in Africa. Six of the world’s ten fastest growing economies of the past decade are in sub-Saharan Africa. A clutch of countries have enjoyed growth in income per person of more than 5% a year since 2007. Zambia is one of them. Yet a frequent complaint heard in Lusaka, the capital, is that the country’s rising GDP has passed much of the population by. The populist appeal of Michael Sata, who became president in 2011, is in part explained by a sense that ordinary Zambians had missed out on the benefits of economic growth.

GDP is not a perfect measure of living standards.

WITH the names of most of Kenya's new ministers unveiled, the response had been overwhelmingly positive. Drawn from outside the country's political class, they were being feted as the “cabinet of professionals”. Then two further appointments were read out: Charity Ngilu (pictured) and Najib Balala, both veteran politicians, were assigned the ministries of lands and mines respectively. Two further ministers out of the total 18 have yet to be announced, but some of the initial enthusiasm has dissipated.

Kenya's new leadership made much of its promise to hire a team of technocrats to run a slimmed down government, and eschew career politicians.