The World Today: June 2010: June 2010

A warship mysteriously sunk, the ailing, ageing Dear Leader trundles overland for frank words from his benefactor. What next? The dying days of the world’s only hereditary Stalinist state, or a standoff just like all those before?

For many Nigerians, relief has followed months of uncertainty, they can afford to be hopeful again for the first time in a long while. Goodluck Jonathan, who has become President after the death of Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, has made every effort to present himself as a self-assured reformer, capable of quick-decisions and tactical thinking. But it is early days and important to be cautious on what the President can and will achieve. However nimble an operator, he may well be tripped-up by the scale and complexity of Nigeria’s challenges, or eventually have to bow to pressure to protect a vested interest.

When many western people think of Africa a set of stock images comes to mind: starvation, poverty, corruption, violence. No matter how many television programmes, articles and campaigns try to change perceptions, these views dominate. In this context, you would have to be mad to call for greater private sector investment. Yet increasing numbers of emerging powers are doing just that. This gulf between western perceptions and modern African realities is doing growing damage to the economic prospects of countries like Britain, just as global competition for resources and power heats up.

This is a story about security, about economics, and about who is in charge. But most of all, it is about life and livelihoods. The global healthcare industry alone is worth $4.1 trillion a year. Yet the money used to bail out the banks and keep the world’s economy moving is also important for health. The G20 group of advanced and emerging economies secures and saves lives. Does it realise this? Does it care? Perhaps yes, but its potential to save more lives is yet to be realised.

The former princely state of Kashmir has been effectively partitioned almost ever since India and Pakistan became separate nations in 1947. No solution is in sight for this dangerous, simmering conflict between two nuclear states. But, perhaps surprisingly, no-one has polled Kashmiris to find out what they have in mind, until now.

Nestling in a valley on top of the world, wedged between two emerging global powers, the small and seemingly neutral former Hindu kingdom of Nepal has not always figured on the antenna of international intelligence agencies. In recent months however, a strategic impasse resulting from a political logjam between Maoists and rival parties, has created a situation where the young republic has become a playground for competing intelligence agencies vying for a foothold in the politics of the fledgling democracy. Sharpened by India’s political rivalry with neighbouring China and Pakistan, and of critical importance to Washington in its complex relationship with Beijing, Nepal has suddenly acquired what some describe as a permissive security environment.