On May 16 2010, a few weeks after its first elections, the government of the semi-autonomous province of South Sudan (GoSS) had to confront two rebellions in the Jonglei Province. South Sudan may appear unified behind the banner of the SPLM/A, but in fact it is nothing of the kind.

Three hundred million people belonging to the middle classes of Africa; three hundred million of potential consumers: an image of this kind is enough to make many an entrepreneur start dreaming. In fact, whereas for many years Afro-pessimism has dominated public opinion in the West, what seems to be the new trend in fashion, in both the media and economic circles, is now an exaggerated Afro-optimism.

The question of the Chinese presence in Madagascar is very accurate. It is an opportunity for us to portray the sino-madagarscan relations.

Armed groups, many affiliated to the Niger Delta-wide political organisation MEND, the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, proliferated throughout the oil producing states, particularly from early 2006 onwards. In January 2006, MEND declared war on the oil industry pending the resolution of long term political grievances relating to poverty and underdevelopment, the poor regulation of an environmentally polluting oil industry, and the alienation of local people from rights to land and resources in the Niger Delta.

A paper brought out last year treating the “Hunger Riots had made it possible, among other things, to point out the extreme difficulties encountered by the authorities in power when trying to control urban populations. Current demographic forecasts relating to sub-Saharan Africa all predict an extremely rapid increase in population and at the same time an even more dramatic rise in the size of urban populations.

This contribution consists in analyzing the unifying or opposing relations between the central State-power and the southern part of central-Saharan populations, mainly Arabs and Tuaregs, within the relational framework of colonial and Malian armed forces. The French Colonial State and the Malian independent State (from the 1960 independence movement) are both considered by Arabs and Tuaregs as external entities, whatever the form of their relation, good or bad.

The industrial revolution underwent by Europe in the 18th century has triggered the need for the major colonial powers to find new markets for their manufactured products. It is in this colonial competitive framework that European explorers delivered information about the different access roads, as well as the Tuareg tribes, notably the Kel Ajjer and the Kel Ahaggar.