this & that

• Africa: the Board Game will be mine. And I will consider teaching about pan-Africanism with it. Oh, yes, I will.
• Zuma tells local ANC officials that the corruption has to stop so social services can be delivered.
• An African view of China's investment on the continent.
• On "Aging African Dictator Syndrome."
• Via @kenyanpundit, somebody mapped Nairobi's matatu routes. This almost - ALMOST - makes me nostalgic for all those days (and nights) on the 105. Of course, that was in the era before the whole "one passenger, one seat" rule. It's just not the same experience when you have a seat belt and you're not holding someone else's child in your lap.
  
• The United States gives Mali's army $5 million in military equipment to fight al-Qaeda. If there's one thing DOD's Africanists have down, it's military cooperation with Mali.
• Kigali gets a large-scale WiFi network.
  
• Uganda still lacks a national language. (via @RachelStrohm)
• Also via @RachelStrohm, Rwanda is working on an oil exploration policy for Lake Kivu. What could possibly go wrong with drilling for oil in a methane-saturated lake on an active fault line?
• Very interesting thoughts on Jeff Sachs' speech at Oxford earlier this week.
  
• On Juba's dual economy.
• The U.S. sent spy drones to the Seychelles to use against Somali pirates.
• Alex de Waal is one of The Atlantic's Brave Thinkers for 2009.
  
• The BBC Magazine provides a helpful guide to what fascism actually is.
• al Shabaab hands out quite a quiz night prize in Somalia.
  
• The new revisions to a specific set of domestic poverty guidelines still don't account for most poor people in America, but this is a good step towards having a more realistic number. And reality isn't pretty.
  
• Rick Perry finally went too far.
• I do not understand paranoia about vaccines - or the willingness of so many people to take medical advice from Jenny McCarthy. It's actually one of the few areas in which I don't think people should have much of a choice. Vaccinations are not just about the health of the child whose parent makes a decision; they are about the health of the entire community, especially those who are most vulnerable to disease. And when the children of people who have irrational fears of vaccinations get everybody else in their preschool or Girl Scout troop sick, it costs us all more money. Anyway, there are plenty of people who disagree with me on that. And the craziest of them were out in Atlanta on Wednesday.
  
• I never thought I'd say this, but God bless Orrin Hatch.
  
• Somebody reached this blog by Googling the following: "peace corps guinea -bissau -fowl -equatorial -papua -pig -pigs." Awesome.