Big Bag o African Blog Links

So there's a plan for communities in Southern Sudan to arm their young men so they can fight off the LRA when it comes to town. Wronging Rights' poll on "what should I be yelling as I tear out my hair" is delicious.

The  Ask Your Government initiative asked governments where the development money goes. Researchers then measured how responsive governments were to the requests. Podcasts are available for the responses from Uganda, Kenya, Zambia, Malawi and South Africa. The relative winners in SSA are Egypt, Ghana, Uganda, Kenya, Zambia, Namibia, Botswana, and South Africa. South Africa was as forthcoming as the US, England, France, and New Zealand or more so.

WalMart in Africa, a hopeful perspective.

Social entrepreneurs protecting Kenyan topsoil by encouraging the growth of micro-forestry:

After each harvest cycle, KOMAZA processes the lumber from farmers' trees into a variety of products including firewood, electricity poles, sawn lumber and even luxurious floorboards. The company then sells the products on markets that would normally be completely inaccessible to smallholder farmers. KOMAZA projects that each microfarm will return over $3,000 to each family at the final harvest, a huge sum for families accustomed to living on less than $300 a year.

Happy belated 50th birthday, Mali. Fun song.

Would Obamacare cover this traditional doctor's services? Everything from diabetes and TB to not being liked at work, bad luck, STDs, and court cases.

Kraft is encouraging Ghanian cocoa farmers to become fair trade certified.

A less than positive piece on Zimbabwe's land reform at machete point. Best quote from the Southern African Confederations of Agricultural Unions research report cited in the article: "tenure reform is more important than land reform in many countries." It applies this to Zimbabwe's and South Africa's very different land reform systems.