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Just as China promoted domestic growth by combining state intervention with private investment, it is now applying this same policy strategy to countries across Africa. The results have been impressive, and the United States and others would do well to start paying attention.

Venal leaders are the curse of Africa, and Robert Mugabe is a walking reminder of how much damage they can do. No mere thug like Idi Amin, the gifted Mugabe created modern Zimbabwe and then robbed it of its enormous potential. The comparatively well-run, well-off country that he inherited is now a corruption-riddled, autocratic mess sent into economic free fall by its kleptomaniacal president's whims -- including tampering with elections, sending troops to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and hiring goons to invade white-owned farms. An indulgent world contributed to Mugabe's sense of invincibility. Instead, he and his ilk should be ostracized.

At least one African in four is a Nigerian; there are more Nigerians than Germans or Frenchmen or Britishers. Nigeria is now America's second-largest supplier of crude oil. Yet most Americans know nothing of this vast country, or if anything, only that there was a bloody civil war a few years back.

This House Has Fallen brings stark new details to a familiar story: the legacy of hatred, corruption, and mismanagement that brought Nigeria to its knees.

Since a disputed election in 2007, Kenya has been plagued by social unrest and political instability. Last week, voters approved a new constitution -- a hopeful sign that the country is heading toward political reconciliation and economic development.

The next U.S. president will inherit a more difficult set of international challenges than any predecessor since World War II.

Examines the nature and extent of Botha's reforms, and their failure culminating in the 1986 state of emergency. Despite his policies to defeat or co-opt all opposition groups both black and white, the confrontation between government and anti-government forces is deepening. Traces how and why South Africa reached the top of the US and Western political agenda, which led to the end of Reagan's policy of constructive engagement and the failure of the Commonwealth's EPG, and the beginning of disengagement. The effects of sanctions and South Africa's policies towards the front-line states are polarizing the country and worsening the crisis throughout Southern Africa.

Of all the upheavals that have marked Africa's transition from colonialism to political independence, none has been more tragic than Nigeria's civil war, either in terms of the immediate human suffering it has caused or the shadow it has cast on the continent's prospects for harmony and prosperity. After two years of inconclusive warfare and the collapse of three major initiatives toward negotiations, genuine peace in Nigeria seems very far away. One prerequisite to bringing it closer is the identification of the issues with which the peacemakers must deal. The present article undertakes this task, first briefly reviewing the war's background and then outlining the questions that must be considered in negotiating a settlement.

United STATES policy in Africa has lost much of its credibility for a large part of the African continent. We have held out hope for more than we have, in the event, been able or willing to deliver. Often the promise of brave words was extravagant and unwise; but what is noticed is that it has not been matched by congruent acts. We have seemed to say one thing and do another. For example, to most of Africa the unqualified and warmly welcomed pronouncement of the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs- "The United States stands for self-determination in Africa"-appears to have been disregarded, even repudiated, in practice, with respect to what in African eyes is the acid test of our bona fides, the "white redoubts" in southern Africa. Again, in promising major and growing American aid for a "decade of development" we declared it to be "a primary necessity, opportunity and responsibility of the United States" to help make "a historic demonstration that economic growth and political democracy can go hand in hand" in building "free, stable, and self-reliant countries." This hope has now been substantially dissipated by the evolution of the U.S. aid syndrome in Africa-initial good intentions, objective standards, policies of rewarding merit, yielding to the pressures of the moment, the putting out of fires, the special concern for "bad boys,""problem children" and the crisis-prone, the needs of "containment," the special interest of allies, the U.S. dollar drain, etc.

Premier Khrushchev's trip to Egypt marks the second round in what promises to be a titanic struggle between Russia and China for African affections. The Soviet leader has behaved in predictable fashion. He has condemned Western imperialism and pledged further assistance to African independence movements, additional economic aid to emerging African states and support to the Arab world in its quarrel with Israel. Each of these positions represented a response to Chou En-lai's earlier bid for influence among 250,000,000 Africans. Moreover, when Khrushchev decried the creation of racial or ethnic divisions in the world and championed instead "true proletarian internationalism," he was directly challenging Peking's right to speak in the name of progress of Marxism.