The latest issue of the New Yorker magazine has a piece by Jon Lee Anderson on recent developments in Guinea in West Africa, where a possibly coked-up military dictator, Moussa Dadis Camara, and his coked-up underlings miscalculated how far France and the US’s backing for his regime would go when they killed at  least a hundred and fifty-six demonstrators and gang-raped more than a hundred women during an opposition protest last year. Unfortunately you need a subscription to read the story. But you can see Anderson do a quick picture slideshow summarizing the events covered in his article.

West Africa just can’t get a break: The New York Times Magazine has a piece by James Traub, one of the magazine’s writers, on “Africa’s drug problem.” Turns out they’re only talking about one country, Guinea-Bissau, which has emerged as a nodal point in three-way cocaine-trafficking operations linking producers in South America with users in Europe. [NY Times Magazine]

After months of uncertainty Caster Semenya can compete again as a woman. [Colorlines].

Talking about woman. Check out Zambia’s women boxing superstar, Esther Phiri [Gender Across Borders]

Black economic empowerment (BEE), the South African government’s policy to create a bigger presence of blacks in the economy, is “not about blacks or about economics …” That’s the blunt assessment of Moeletsi Mbeki, the brother of former president, Thabo, and a businessman himself. [The Economist]

The International Criminal Court is to probe the 2007 election violence in Kenya and may put some leading politicians and business people. The prosecutor has identified six definite suspects to be put on trial for crimes against humanity. As Africa Confidential reminds us: “Organised militias and police killed over 1,100 civilians following President Mwai Kibaki’s disputed election victory in December 2007 and chased more than 300,000 people from their homes.” The prosecutor in question unfortunately is the grandstanding Luis Moreno Ocampo, so I wait till he actually does it. [Africa Confidential]

In 1961, the American intellectual W.E.B. du Bois, 93-years old at the time, moved to Ghana on the invitation of Kwame Nkrumah, then the first president of independent Ghana. In 1963 he died and was buried in the capital Accra. A center honoring Du Bois legacy was also built on the site where he was buried. However, as the BBC Focus on Africa magazine reports this month: “… The absence of Ghanaian names in the visitors book [of the center] suggests that while there is interest from the diaspora, it would appear that Africans themselves, and Ghanaians in particular, are not being enticed. It seems the center has become another leg on the tourist trail–something Ghana’s tourist board uses to bring African Americans to the country, alongside slave castles like Elmina and the Kwame Nkrumah mausoleum.” [BBC Focus on Africa]

Jon Qwelane, an avowed homophobe–who praised Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe for his “unflinching and unapologetic stance over homosexuals,” compared gay relationships to bestiality, and called for the repeal of constitutional provisions protecting same sex relationships in a newspaper column–is now officially South African Ambassador in homophobic Uganda. [Blacklooks]

The Washington Post has a disturbing story of how the U.S.-backed government of Somalia and its Kenyan allies “have recruited hundreds of Somali refugees [in camps in Kenya], including children, to fight in a war against al-Shabab, an Islamist militia linked to al-Qaeda.” Refugees are promised up to US$600 per month, which they never see. Their traumatized families, fearing deportation, seldom complain to local authorities. It is a violation of international law to recruit refugees and a war crime to enlist children under 15 years. [The Washington Post]

The BBC has a new TV series on the “ingenuity” of poor people in Nigeria’s commercial capital, Lagos.  The Observer‘s acting arts editor, Akin Ojumu, who is also a fan of David Cameron’s ideas about black men and responsibility, likes it. Sokari at Blacklooks, who observes that suddenly there is a flurry of Nigeria-focused coverage on British TV, does not.

Stefan May, a smart German guy I met in Dresden two summers ago, won a grant to blog for the European Union. His first post is on energy alternatives, including a unique project in Mali that installs solar panels in rural parts of the country and teaches farmers to cultivate the local Jatropha-fruit, whose oil can be used as biofuel for diesel-engines. [Think Development]

Political scientist Allison Drew on postapartheid South Africa: “… [A]lmost 16 years since the country’s first democratic elections, post-apartheid South Africa remains sharply divided along racial lines. Johannesburg’s slick cosmopolitan culture notwithstanding, black and white middle and upper classes rarely socialise together, and the city’s glitzy shopping complexes are staffed by personnel from impoverished Alexandra and other nearby townships.” [Political Insight Magazine]

British women can now send their used panties and bras to charities who give these middlemen to sell the undergarments to Africa. Seriously.  And as Unreal posted this weekend about a scheme to adopt African clitorises. [Various]

South African musicians are upset they will not be performing at official events during the World Cup. [The Guardian]

Meanwhile, The Guardian drew up a list of South African slang to help visitors make sense of what South Africans are saying. For example, what is babbelas, diski, eina, a fundi, and lekker. Find out. [The Guardian]

Finally, you can listen to a full concert recorded by Beninois singer, Angelique Kidjo and her band in New York City [NPR]