Dictators are allergic to reform, and they are cunning survivors. They will do whatever it takes to preserve their power and wealth, no matter how much blood ends up on their hands. They are master deceivers and talented manipulators who cannot be trusted to change.

Africa's salvation doesn't lie in begging and begging for more aid, and as an African, I find it very, very humiliating.

Across Africa there is what I call a colonialist mentality or orthodoxy. Orthodoxy in the sense that a lot of things have gone wrong in Africa in the post-colonial period. And time and time again, any time something went wrong, the leadership claims that it was never their fault.

The solutions to Africa's problems lie in Africa, not in Live Aid concerts.

Dictators are allergic to reform, and they are cunning survivors. They will do whatever it takes to preserve their power and wealth, no matter how much blood ends up on their hands. They are master deceivers and talented manipulators who cannot be trusted to change.

Virtually all of Africa's civil wars were started by politically marginalized or excluded groups.

In a banana republic, one might slip on a banana peel but things do work - now and then for the people, albeit inefficiently and unreliably.