[Photo: XO Laptop, One Laptop Per Child] While on the subject of technology and development, I should direct your attentions to a recent post by Jon Evans at his World Fast Forward blog. One of the debates currently raging in development circles has been the relative merits of mobile phones vs. laptops in advancing the economic [...]

[Photo: Tyler Stiem] As falls from grace go, mine was humbler than that of Dawda Jawara, the president-for-life who’d been overthrown in a bloodless coup a few years before my arrival in the Gambia, but it was also, in its way, pretty humbling. It was my first time in Africa. I’d accepted a job as a writer [...]

My article on chieftaincy-related conflicts in Ghana appears today at the Globe and Mail online, coinciding with national elections there scheduled for tomorrow. The piece was assigned and written months ago, while I was in West Africa and the town of Bawku was still under a 6pm-6am curfew in the wake of some brutal attacks. [...]