The good news this month is that South Africa marks the twentieth year of the end of its nuclear weapons program this July. That may have removed a significant threat but elsewhere in the impoverished and war-ravaged continent the increasing quantities of conventional weapons make any observer of African politics nervous. According to some reports, in 2010, Africa imported arms worth nearly one billion dollars from Ukraine alone.

The deadlines for SIM card registration are fast approaching on millions across the continent. Some countries, like Zimbabwe, have already finished the process after extending the cut-off dates a few times in consideration of the colossal task of documenting the identity of owners of mobile phones.

On June 17, 2011, King Mohammed VI of Morocco announced a series of proposed amendments to the country’s constitution. The Moroccan constitutional reforms are significant and unprecedented in the Arab world, as King Mohammed VI is clearly attempting to get in front of the demands for change sweeping the Middle East. Ambassador Edward M. Gabriel – the United States Ambassador to the Kingdom of Morocco from November 1997 to March 2001 – discussed the constitutional reforms with Foreign Policy Digest.

Once in a while a nectarous, readable volume arrives from the academic press. Impressively matched by the rigorous research that went into it, Lisa Richey and Stefano Ponte’s Brand Aid: Shopping Well to Save the World presents a titillating account of the star-studded RED campaign that whets the appetites of all kinds of readers.

Pieces of rock from a dynamited boulder fly all over. An army of excavators, bulldozers, loaders, and scores of heavy machines dig through the giant Omo gorge in Southern Ethiopia near the Kenyan border.

On January 26th, a group of eco-activists draped a banner designed to look like thick oozing oil over the façade of Shell Headquarters in the Hague. It read, “Shell, let’s go clean Nigeria!”, and was hung on the same day that the Dutch parliament scheduled a hearing to examine what Amnesty International and environmental groups alleged were the extremely hazardous environmental practices of the company. Shell simply denied the accusations, and went as far as declining to pay the $100 million fine to support victims of its operations in Nigeria.

Pssst! Want to get rich quick and never worry about money again? No worries. Click reply on your email and send your personal information to the “good Samaritan” prince from West Africa, who would like to do business with you. If you are one of those credulous people among millions who receive exactly the same polite, formally written, and seductive letters, there is a new one for you.

During a Fall 2008 episode of the continuing Somali pirate saga, Sugale Ali, a representative of the band of pirates that hijacked the Ukrainian cargo ship MV Faina, was repeating his group’s demand for twenty million dollars. The American Navy kept a close watch, as were others; this entanglement played on a much larger scale than previous instances of coastal piracy.