China’s government may have high-profile political and strategic reasons for seeking closer ties with Africa, but its companies are on the continent mostly for the money, analysts say.

Earlier this year, Vickie Lipke and Debi Creighton embarked on an eighteen day journey from Kern Valley halfway around the world on a mission trip to Angola, a troubled country in the heart of Africa.

A man walks past a branch of the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) in Hong Kong, 12 June 2007. China’s government may have high-profile political and strategic reasons for seeking closer ties with Africa, but its companies are on the continent mostly for the money, analysts say.

DISTURBANCE-LOVING SPECIES By Peter Chilson (Mariner Books, 240 pages, $13.95) Somewhere out beyond the markers placed by Joseph Conrad and Isak Dinesen is the reality of Africa, a continent and its peoples at once vibrant and terrible, but somehow just beyond the reach of even the keenest foreign imagination. That fraught disjunction is what animates Peter Chilson’s first collection of short …

The environment in war-ravaged Somalia has become more hostile than ever for both local and international journalists. Amnesty International has condemned the recurrent killing of journalists and harassment of the media in the lawless Horn of Africa nation.

Africa hit by floods and more rain is scheduled