In one of history’s great ironies the Muslim world of the Middle East, once so far ahead of Europe and the rest of the world, in science, medicine, astronomy and mathematics has today fallen so far behind. Most of it has never industrialized. Had it not been for the oil the region has in abundance, most of these countries would still be living in the poverty they lived in the early years of the twentieth century.

Spring had come round again. At Wrightsville Beach (North Carolina) in our fourth floor room a large glass door opens to a balcony overlooking the Atlantic. As far as the eye could see there was nothing but endless expanse of water. Away from the shore there was calmness. The crystal blue waters shimmered. In the far distance the water appeared to rise, curve and merge with the sky. Nearby at the shoreline white waves rose and crashed in a perpetual attempt to overrun the beach.

Last December a group of us set out on a field trip in the Murchison Falls Park Area, the largest such game reserve in Uganda and one of the finest environmental resort in all East Africa. Among the Acholi people of the area we encountered a tale that rose out of the land from the wisdom of the ages.

Party monopolies reduce African firms' productivity, according to new research. While infrastructure and access to finance are much-cited constraints on African firms' competitiveness, a new study has identified a less obvious

Somewhere in Northern Uganda the Nile narrows down from its stately average width of 2.8 kilometers to a mere 7 meters. Amidst rocks as ancient as the Earth, the great River plunges to a depth of 43 meters in a frothing roaring extravaganza, throwing a dazzling rainbow.

From early 15^th century or there about, pre coin monetary systems, in the form of cowry shells, precious metals and others, began circulating in the coastal areas of East Africa. These steadily spread inland to reach places as far removed from the coast as present day Uganda and much of eastern Congo. They slowly but not completely replaced the age old system of trade by barter.

Two hours to the end of his eight year pontificate, Pope Benedict the16^th bade farewell and uttered his last blessings to the world as Pontiff from the balcony at Saint Peter’s Square at the Vatican. Then to a friendly and cheering crowd of the faithful and the curious that came to see him in their multitudes the Pontiff turned his back. But Benedict seemed at that moment even more popular, probably because he had shown the way.

The conventional wisdom in the Kenyan media is that the 2013 election has been an ethnic census, not issue-based. This half-truth fails to recognize the issues that drive the ethnicisation of politics.. It is true that the easiest way to predict how an individual voted would be to know his or her ethnicity. What is not so obvious is to perceive how ethnic blocs have voted and for whom. To graph this we actually need to look at the issues