When President Obama and the first lady travel to Africa at the end of this month, they will receive a rapturous greeting. ...

According to a leaked Israeli court document, a deal has been reached with an unidentified country to absorb some of the 60,000 “illegal” immigrants, mostly Eritrean or Sudanese that have sought asylum in Israel. ...

Ethiopian government officials this week celebrated the diversion of the Blue Nile river for what they’ve dubbed the Great Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, which is expected to provide hydroelectricity for Ethiopia and neighboring countries by 2015. ...

As the African Union prepares to mark the 50th anniversary of the Organization of African Unity (OAU), AU officials have for the first time refused access to citizen groups, civil society organizations and foreign diplomats, among others, to their high-level summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. “This has not come from the commission; this has come from the member states themselves,” said AU Chair Nkosazana Dlam ...

Fulfilling a demand by the insurgent Boko Haram rebel organization, Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan has agreed to release from jail some suspects and all women “held in connection with terrorist activity.” The decision was aimed at enhancing peace efforts in Nigeria, according to the defense ministry. ...

On May 25, 1963, 33 independent African states met in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to form the Organization of African Unity (OAU). The purpose of the summit 50 years ago was to enhance cooperation between member states and to accelerate the liberation struggles of those countries that still remained under colonial rule. ...

When President George W. Bush contemplated the invasion of Iraq, then U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell warned him that an armed intervention that would make conditions in that country worse would be held to the Pottery Barn Rule: “If you break it, you own it.” This caveat was essentially ignored by President Bush in Iraq, and since that time, the U.S. military establishment has, to its detriment, disreg ...

When Nelson Mandela and his African National Congress comrades were plotting to overthrow the white minority-rule apartheid regime in South Africa, Lilies Farm in Rivonia, just north of Johannesburg, served as their secret hideout. Today, 19 years after South Africa made a bloodless transition to a democracy with the election of Mandela as its first Black president, the picturesque land, now called Liliesle ...

(GIN) — Africa’s acclaimed man of letters Chinua Achebe  will be laid to rest this month in his hometown of Ogidi, Anambra state, in eastern Nigeria, surrounded by friends, Nobel laureates and other luminaries. Among those who have reserved their place at the memorial are Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Nadine Gordimer, author Toni Morrison, Ruth Simmons and Johnetta B. Cole. Achebe, the author of “Things Fall Apa ...

Human rights activist Jesse L. Jackson has been presented the Companions of O.R. Tambo Award, the highest award a non-South African can receive, for his extensive efforts to help end apartheid in the country. Jackson, founder and president of the Chicago-based RainbowPUSH Coalition, accepted the award Saturday from President Jacob Zuma at the Presidential Guesthouse in Pretoria, one of the nation’s capital ...