- Why are so many African flags red, yellow and green? It may be connected to Ethiopia’s successful resistance to colonialism (although Ken Opalo raises other posibilities in the comments)
- In other Ethiopian news, Alex de Waal argues that improved governance means that the era of great famines is over
- The synthesis report from the Developmental Regimes in Africa project is one of the single best pieces I’ve seen about economic development in years
- A thought provoking article from Tim Hirschel-Burns makes the case that the US ought to cancel all aid to Somalia and accept 80,000 Somali immigrants instead
- Eight years for falling asleep in a parked car: welcome to Angola’s prison system
- Grieve Chelwa has a typically excellent post on major flaws in the Corruption Perceptions Index, and the problem of excusing tax havens from discussions of corruption
- Ryan Briggs writes about declining publication rates for African authors in leading journals of African studies
- If you’re interested in the politics of cash transfers in Africa, the Centre for Social Science Research at UCT has a phenomenal series of case studies from around the continent. Pair with the Transfer Project‘s new book on cash transfers and impact evaluation in Africa, coming out in July
- Song of the week: Subculture Sage‘s remarkable new video “Gold” documents a day in the life of an informal gold miner in Zimbabwe
Rachel Strohm 
On the colors of African flags: I don’t think the Ethiopian story explains it all. What drove much of the yellow and green, at least as I was taught, was local ideas of what the new states were going to be about. The green represents agricultural land in many textbooks — not just in Kenya. And if you notice, the yellow is mainly clustered in West Africa. I know that in a few of these countries it represents gold production (and here there actually might be a strong Ghana effect, too). Red, in most instances, appears in countries that had some form of anti-colonialism resistance. Same with black. The Ethiopia story may still hold water, but I am yet to see it in any textbooks. Of course they might have copied Ethiopia, and then found local justifications for their choices.
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Great points!
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