Forty two million more Sub-Saharan African children entered primary school between 2000 and 2008, according to a UNESCO report released this week.

The Financing Education in Sub-Saharan Africa report reveals “tremendous” gains in the provision of basic education on the back of a 6 percent annual increase in real education expenditure across the region in the past decade. This includes a 48 percent increase in primary enrolment, while enrolment in pre-primary, secondary and tertiary education grew by more than 60 percent over the same period.

Albert Motivans, author of the report, says that the increases corresponded with a decade of economic growth across the continent, leading to a general increase in education spending.

“We’ve seen that the economic climate has been fairly stable and the generalisation across the region is that we’ve seen modest but positive levels of economic growth over the decade,” observed Mr Motivans.

Notable increases in education expenditure were seen in countries such as Burundi and Mozambique, with both countries registering a 12 percent annual rise. Elsewhere, progress has been more muted.

“Within the region there’s a lot of variation, some countries moving ahead rapidly and those which are staying the same or even falling behind,” Mr Motivans says.

Total public expenditure on education as a percentage of GDP fell from 6 percent to 5.4 percent in South Africa between 1999 and 2009, but the country recorded a large boost in higher secondary education provision.

Kenya recorded an increase in total public expenditure on education from 5.3 percent to 6.7 percent over the same period, with significant advances in primary education provision. Out of 26 countries studied in the report, only the Central African Republic reduced spending on education over the period. The country recorded a decrease in total expenditure on education as a percentage of government spending from 14.5 percent in 1999 to 11.7 percent in 2008.

However, a drop-off in growth levels as a result of the international financial crisis, as well as expected population growth in sub-Saharan Africa, risk undermining progress. UN forecasts estimate that the region’s population will almost double to 1.9bn in 2050.

“One of the important constraints is that populations are still growing at quite a rapid rate,” notes Mr Motivans, adding that “looking backwards one can say that there’s very large growth in enrolment, but when we look forward from the time of the onset of the financial crisis then we see a picture where there’s much less room for manoeuvre.”

The report also warns that many countries are a long way from achieving universal primary education by 2015 – one of eight Millennium Development Goals set out by the UN in 2000.

A significant challenge will be the compromises needed between getting more children into schools and providing an adequate minimum standard for those who already have a place. Secondary school systems will also be placed under greater strain by the expectation that primary school graduates will choose to continue their studies.

“As increasing numbers of primary school graduates demand access to secondary education, governments will need to expand further education by balancing resource requirements and availability, social demands and economic needs for a more highly skilled labour force,” the report says.

The arrest of strongman Laurent Gbagbo by French-backed forces has ended an extended political standoff in Côte d’Ivoire. While the development has raised hopes of a resolution to the country’s renewed civil war, it is unlikely to necessitate an immediate cease in fighting, and president Alassane Ouattara faces significant challenges in reuniting a divided nation.

Mr Gbagbo, who refused step down after losing November elections, was arrested by forces loyal to his opponent, the internationally-recognised president Mr Ouattara. Following his arrest, a submissive Mr Gbagbo was taken to the Hotel Golf in Abidjan, which has served as his rival’s headquarters. UN officials said he would be moved within the next few hours to a secure location in the north.

Mr Ouattara made a televised appeal for peace shortly after the arrest, and has said his rival’s camp will face justice. The International Criminal Court is in talks with the West African state about referring allegations of atrocities to the court to facilitate an investigation.

Mr Gbagbo’s capture finally allows Mr Ouattara to assert control over Côte d’Ivoire after a more than four month tug-of-war with his rival. However, the president is already facing questions regarding France’s role in the arrest. His opponent was detained after more than 30 French armoured vehicles closed in on his residence in Abidjan. The advance followed attacks by French and UN helicopters, which destroyed Mr Gbagbo’s heavy weapons and damaged the presidential bunker.

Mr Gbagbo has been eager to paint the president as a puppet of the country’s former colonial leader; a picture Mr Ouattara’s camp is trying to dispel with persistent indications that it was local forces that arrested the strongman.

“It’s almost irrelevant who put the handcuffs on Gbagbo in the end, because it’s clear that the French and the UN forces had a large role to play in this,” says Richard Downie, deputy director and fellow, Africa Programme, at the Washington-based Centre for Strategic and International Studies. “It’s hugely politically damaging for Ouattara to be associated with the French in this way, and to have him perceived as being propelled to office by French assistance rather than through the ballot box.”

Consequently, Mr Downie explains, “Ouattara is going to be viewed with enormous suspicion by a large proportion of people in Côte d’Ivoire. Trying to win them round is going to be his main challenge.”

While a forthright approach to dispelling the notion that the French delivered the final blow to Mr Gbagbo’s rule could ease tensions, it may not be enough to abate violence. The elections – aimed to reunite a country left divided across a north-south axis after its 2002 civil war – have reawakened ethnic hostilities, seeing hundreds of people killed and atrocities against civilians committed by both camps, aid agencies say.

Local militia groups such as the pro-Gbagbo Jeunes Patriotes are unlikely to lay down arms immediately. “There’s a significant threat of reprisal attacks against foreigners and also against anyone perceived to be an Ouattara supporter,” Mr Downie says. Meanwhile the actions of northern rebel movement – the Forces Nouvelles – which, finding a common enemy in Mr Gbagbo, sided with Mr Ouattara during the standoff, remain unpredictable.

Uniting divided militia groups will be an immediate challenge for the president. “These are the very tensions that unravelled the peace agreement from the last civil war: the failure to adequately disarm and demobilise these various forces and unite them under one national umbrella was really at the heart of the problems,” Mr Downie indicates. “It’s a tough ask for Ouattara and that is his number one challenge – the security sector reform side of things and forging some sort of national military that can bring people together, respect human rights and act professionally rather than commit abuses against the population.”

If human rights transgressions committed by soldiers affiliated to Mr Outtara have been damaging to his legitimacy, ensuring transparent investigations into these abuses will be central to regenerating any sense of validity as president. Mr Ouattara has promised a South-African style Truth and Reconciliation Commission to shed light on crimes committed by both camps.

Safaricom, Kenya’s biggest mobile operator, has announced a deal with Western Union, the international money transfer company, to enable its M-Pesa mobile money service subscribers to receive direct cash transfers from Western Union agents worldwide.

“Consumers can now send money directly to the mobile ‘wallets’ of Safaricom M-PESA subscribers in Kenya from 45 countries and territories,” explains Karen Jordaan, East and Southern Africa Director at Western Union.

The service taps into Africa’s huge remittances flows, which the World Bank estimates to have totalled $40bn in 2010.

Betty Mwangi Thuo, general manger financial services at Safaricom, says that “This partnership also opens up the north American remittances corridor which accounts for over 50% of remittances to Kenya.”

The service, which extends to more than 80,000 Western Union agent locations worldwide, is the latest in a series of products to be launched in Africa’s fast growing mobile money industry.

“Mobile network operators are seeking value-added services for their customers to improve loyalty, with account-based and mobile financial services topping the list of “sticky products” similar to online bill payment,” says Western Union’s MS Jordaan.

Launched in 2007, M-Pesa enables money transfers between mobile telephones, and has an estimated 13.5m subscribers in Kenya alone. It is also available in Tanzania and South Africa. Last summer, Safaricom teamed up with Kenya’s Equity Bank to launch “M-Kesho”, a comprehensive financial services product. M-Kesho gives Safaricom subscribers direct access to their Equity Bank accounts, effectively turning the user’s cell phone into a mobile bank branch.

Other major operators in the region are rolling out similar products.

Last November South Africa’s MTN Group, the continent’s largest mobile operator, announced a similar agreement with Western union, and in March 2011 the company teamed up with South African insurance provider, Hollard Insurance, to launch a pilot insurance scheme using mobile telephones in Ghana.

MTN has also launched its MobileMoney service in a number of countries, with plans to extend this to all 16 of its African markets, which account for a subscriber base of more than 100m users.  At the same time, Indian owned Airtel, which has a presence in 15 countries in the region with 45m subscribers, has announced plans to expand its Zap mobile money service.

Africa’s mobile money industry, the worlds fastest growing, has generated significant interest for its potential applications to drive financial inclusion on the continent. An estimated 80 percent of sub-Saharan Africa’s population does not currently have access to formal financial services.

Mr Juma’s latest book, “The New Harvest: Agricultural Innovation in Africa” links mobile telephones, political engagement, renewable energy, regional integration and infrastructure and emerges with an optimistic assessment of Africa’s agricultural potential.

“I think the difference is that a lot of previous optimism was guided more by expectations and less by evidence,” he says. “What we did was we abandoned theory and ideology and said, ‘let’s go and see what’s happening in Africa’.”

The two examples that Mr Juma highlights – Rwanda and Malawi – both challenge accepted ideologies in agricultural and economic development.

“Malawi, for two or three decades, was a laboratory for studying malnutrition. People kept datasets on Malawi’s households. If you wanted to study malnutrition, you went to Malawi. And in comes a president [Bingu wa Mutharika] and makes some really radical decisions, in terms of governance and in terms of redirecting resources, saying instead of subsidising consumers, let’s try subsidising producers. Basically, going against ideology,” Mr Juma says.

“That process exposed the importance of high level coordination. He had to appoint himself the minister for agriculture to actually do it. And it was actually for very practical reasons, because to get fertilisers to some areas they needed to build roads, and the minister responsible for roads was not interested in connecting rural areas, he was interested in connecting urban areas. So by appointing himself minister for agriculture, he was actually able to provide that coordination that was needed to get other ministries to play along … and then the turnaround was really very rapid. It was a couple of years and Malawi became a net exporter of food.”

Rwanda, which itself saw a remarkable turnaround in its agricultural sector in the early years of its recovery from the 1994 genocide, provides another lesson for policymakers. While its economic growth story has been held up as one of modernisation, and its future plans revolve around becoming an information technology hub for East Africa, its development was underpinned by agriculture.

As per the Rwandan example, Mr Juma advocates: “getting back to common sense, getting away from the philosophy that we transition from agriculture to industry to services. But actually the reason we are able to move from agriculture to industry is because we’ve done agriculture. Not because we are bypassing agriculture.”

The “innovation” in the book’s subtitle includes a broad range of technologies, from existing mobile money transfer systems, such as M-pesa, through to genetically modified organisms.

The spread of telecommunications across the continent introduces new efficiencies to the sector, Mr Juma says. Access to financial services and information allow farmers to better plan and manage their crops, and telecom-based solutions could replace traditional extension services. Advances in renewable energy could allow decentralised generation, which in turn could power small scale rural storage facilities for meat and crops, enabling the more efficient use of land and resources.

The potential adoption of GMO crops in Africa remains a politically controversial one, on one hand offering drought and pest resistance and higher yields, but on the other reducing the export potential to markets still suspicious of their long term effects. Mr Juma is cool on their potential to have systemic effects on agricultural development, noting that none of their advantages overcome the basic deficiencies that currently encumber African farmers.

“Without foundation investments in infrastructure and higher technical training, the debate on GMOs is totally irrelevant,” he says.

Infrastructure remains the most significant bottleneck for agricultural development on the continent. Road networks, particularly those which link rural producing areas with urban markets are sorely deficient across the continent. Equally, transport links between regional economies are weak. Irrigation, a cornerstone of the Asian green revolution, is lacking. “Only about 3 percent of African agriculture is irrigated, compared to roughly 45 percent in South Asia. The potential for that is huge.”

Fixing these is the basepoint for agricultural development, Mr Juma notes. However, put off by accountability and corruption issues that have often dogged big projects, international donors have pulled back from their commitments to infrastructure in recent years. This is where they could have the greatest systemic impact, Mr Juma says, but in their absence he proposes a potentially radical solution – military intervention.

“We are looking at how these countries can leverage surplus capacity in engineering to extend infrastructure and we are exploring the possibility of bringing in the military,” he says. There is excess manpower, engineering expertise and equipment in both domestic and foreign militaries on the continent. “I’ve had conversations even with the foreign militaries that are involved in Africa, saying ‘you have all this equipment, you are dealing with issues like terrorism, but there is an area where you could have a very serious and significant presence, which is to engage with Africans in the area of infrastructure. How about leveraging your equipment?’”

A combination of a self-imposed export ban and European Union sanctions targeting Côte d’Ivoire could curtail talk of a cocoa market surplus during the current crop year.

In January, ICCO, the International Cocoa Organisation, forecast a market oversupply of 100,000 tonnes based on assumptions of an uninterrupted supply from the West African country, which accounts for around 40 percent of global production.

The EU has imposed sanctions on a number of trade and economic bodies in Côte d’Ivoire as it attempts to cut off financial support to incumbent president Laurent Gbagbo, who has refused to leave office following elections in November, which the United Nations says were won by his opponent, Alassane Ouattara. The two parties have been locked in a stalemate. The EU’s sanctions include measures against the main cocoa exporting ports of San Pedro and Abidjan, which are seen as providing revenues for Mr Gbagbo’s illegitimate regime. International bodies hope that preventing Mr Gbagbo from paying his soldiers may undermine their support for his cause.

On Saturday 22 Jan, Mr Outtara added to market concerns by ordering a ban on exports of cocoa and coffee. The previous Friday, cocoa had hit a six month high of just under $3,400 per tonne.

The cocoa market has been experiencing occasional supply deficits for the past few years. The 2006-2007 season saw a shortage of 258,000 tonnes, with deficits of 52,000 tonnes and 79,000 tonnes in 2007-2008 and 2009-2010, respectively. Despite supply forecasts, trader Anthony Ward at the hedge fund Armajaro made headlines by acquiring 7 percent of the global market during July 2010, pushing prices – already inflated by concerns over weather and political instability – to highs of $5,000 per tonne.

Political and security developments have a major impact on trading prices and futures. Since the start of the election dispute in Côte d’ Ivoire, key export hubs, such as San Pedro, have been operating with only minor disruption. Cocoa arrivals from hinterland farms could be disrupted by severe violence, but so far arrivals have continued with only minor fluctuations, and to some extent the deteriorating political outlook is offset by the seasonal harvest peak.

“The sanctions could cause operational difficulties for Western operators.  In the current volatile climate, we expect markets to react strongly to any hint of possible export,” says Anne Frühauf, an analyst at political risk consultancy Eurasia Group. “Over the past decade, the Ivorian economy has demonstrated some resilience to crisis. Commodities such as cocoa and increasingly oil have been major contributors to a modest uptick in growth over the past two years – reaching 3.8 percent in 2009 for the first time. However, a prolonged political crisis, or indeed a repartitioning of the country, would make it impossible to continue on this positive trajectory and GDP growth could slump back into negative terrain, similar to the early 2000s.”

Political instability has been dogging the country’s efforts to revitalise its ageing cocoa sector for close to a decade. A large swath of cocoa orchard in the country is aged and under yielding.  For want of timely reinvestment, the country’s production has been flat for the last ten years, according to Laurent Pipitone, director in the economics and statistics division at the ICCO. “There has been a drastic drop in the average production from the plantations that has large presence of aged plants. Poor yield is forcing farmers to shift to other crops,” Mr Pipitone says.

The unrest since the 2002 civil war which split the country has substantially undermined investors’ confidence in Côte d’Ivoire’s cocoa industry. Despite increasing interest in the commodity as emerging markets, including China and India, begin to consume more, the country has missed out on large amounts of potential investment.

As United Nations undersecretary general for peacekeeping, Jean-Marie Guéhenno oversaw the organisation’s largest expansion in deployed personnel, but today he is cautious about the use of military intervention and critical of the UN’s ability to properly leverage its deployments.

“I think we often exaggerate what military force can achieve. Myself, I was and I am a supporter of robust peacekeeping, but I don’t think one should overplay it,” he says. “There are situations where a decisive application of force… makes a difference and creates the right momentum. But most of the time the notion that you can just weigh in with force is an illusion. Force, the possibility of force sends a signal, but force is a … very blunt instrument.”

The international community was quick to raise the prospect of intervention when the much-delayed elections in Côte d’Ivoire resulted in a stalemate, with incumbent and loser Laurent Ggagbo refusing to relinquish his office. The UN already has a limited presence in the country and is protecting the internationally-recognised winner, Allassane Ouattara. The regional bloc, the Economic Community of West African States initially backed military action to unseat Mr Gbagbo.

For some analysts, this action did little to help the already tense negotiations, as the incumbent was able to draw support from the nationalist sentiments enflamed by the appearance of outside intervention.

Mr Guéhenno’s advice is to think very hard about intervention, and to make sure that any action involves decisive and overwhelming force “If you’re not sure then you can get in the worst of all worlds, as you harden the position [of the target] but you’re not in a position to really deliver [peace],” he says.

The UN has often been criticised for inadequate or inefficient interventions, which do little to break long-term cycles of instability. Mr Guéhenno says that often, this is a function of the lack of political support that follows an action.

“We throw troops at an issue and then the Security Council thinks it has done its job, whereas that’s really where it starts,” he laments. “There should be political fuel behind the troops. There is a loss of interest. The peacekeepers, in my view, are just like chips that the international community puts on the table to show that it has an interest. But then it has to demonstrate that interest with political engagement, and it often doesn’t do it.”

Even so, he adds, the criticism that the UN becomes bogged down in areas of insoluble instability, unable to withdraw or progress, is not always well thought-out.

“Sometimes the absence of war, even if there is no real deep peace, is already a good thing. You see situations that have been in a stalemate for many years, like Western Sahara, for example,” he says. “Yes there are military observers there and the situation hasn’t found a political resolution yet, that’s unfortunate. At the same time, the cost of any conflict is so much higher than the cost of  having those observers. People complain a lot about frozen conflicts in all continents. I’m of the view that a frozen conflict is better than a hot conflict.”

In January 2011, Mr Guéhenno took on a new role as chair of the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue, a Geneva-based organisation which intermediates in conflict zones. A small group which has no affiliation and operates outside of the international media spotlight, it is a far cry from the legions of blue helmets that he is used to.

“The strength of HD is that it has no army behind it, it is just a foundation with no political power, and that absence of political power is the greatest strength, in many cases. We are not threatening. That is important to a lot of actors in conflict,” he says.

There is a worrying trend, he says, of international actors refusing to negotiate with individual parties to a conflict for fear of legitimising them. This has added complexity to situations such as Sudan, where an International Criminal Court warrant taken out against Omar al-Bashir, the country’s president, precludes the mainstream of the international community from directly speaking with the head of state. Similar situations occur on a smaller scale, and the exclusion of any one party from talks is far from conducive in reaching agreements. This seems self-evident, but is not often observed.

“HD takes the opposite stance, in that talking to a party in a conflict is not rewarding it, it’s not making a judgement on the goals it pursues, but it’s the essence of conflict resolution. One should not make any judgement before talking to a particular party,” Mr Guéhenno says. “Unfortunately, that is a business that is expanding, because there are many conflicts in the world where just talking to the parties is not seen as acceptable, and that’s what HD does.”

In Sudan, the HD Centre has been involved in the disputed South Khordofan and Blue Nile provinces, which lie along the disputed border between the north and south of the country, an independence referendum in the south has passed, largely without incident, despite widespread pessimism. The Centre also mediated in Somaliland, which held successful elections in 2010.

An increasing international focus on state building in so-called “ungoverned spaces” that followed the NATO-led invasion of Afghanistan throws up new challenges and new sources of conflict as it presupposes a western model of state building that can clash with existing structures, Mr Guéhenno says. The modern state, with its legal and enforcement mechanisms, is part of the package that comes with western-led intervention and investment. However, it is difficult to mesh this with traditional mechanisms.

“This is not an abstract problem,” he explains. “If you look at land issues in Africa, for example, the tug of war that you often see between the modern state that wants to apply the national rules to the allocation of land, and then traditional rights, and, for instance, when international companies buy big tracts of land, how that infringes on traditional rights, how that is managed, how that can become a source of conflict. These are issues that are not abstract. They are very real. So when one talks about governance, I think one of the big issues is precisely how you connect those different levels.

“In a place like Congo, I have been struck by how, in a way, local conflict, the situation in the Kivus are a big part of the conflict, but then they become manipulated and instrumentalised by the regional and at the national level by various actors. That is what makes it intractable. If you want to solve it, you have to connect these various levels.”

State building and conflict resolution according to academic plans drawn up in Western capitals is unlikely to succeed, and an increasingly complex international distribution of power – including the emergence of geopolitical poles in Asia and Latin America – means that a wider spread of voices need to be taken into account, Mr Guéhenno says. The HD Centre will be looking to recruit mediators from a broader pool than it previously would have, he adds.

“I think it will be very important to have negotiators from a range of countries, not [stick to] the idea that it is just some sophisticated Europeans or Westerners that are going to solve the problems of the developing countries,” he says.

“We tend to think that these [developing] countries should take exactly the same path that we followed and just take a shortcut. While in reality, they’re going to take a different route,” he adds. “The injection of international money is immensely destabilising. It can be destabilising for the good, but it can also be destabilising for the bad. We don’t have much awareness, I would say, of the impact that we have on fragile countries. Even that expression is already, in a way, a judgement that projects our own definition of what states should be.”

Polling in a referendum on the independence of southern Sudan is complete, and appears to show that the autonomous region’s population have come out strongly in favour of secession. At the time of writing, figures were not available, but all indications pointed towards a majority “yes” vote on independence. The poll has been approved by international observers.

The referendum was a condition of a 2005 ceasefire deal, the Comprehensive Peace Agreement, which ended a cycle of civil violence that began on the eve of united Sudan’s independence in 1956. Since the signing of the CPA, the south has been run effectively as an autonomous province, with a government in Juba taking on many of the day-to-day functions of state.

The US, UK and other international players staked money and diplomatic capital on the safe passage of the poll, the result of which took on a degree of inevitability as the date drew closer. While “making unity attractive” was part of the original CPA agreement, diplomatic sources in the country acknowledge that vilification of Khartoum over its role in genocide in the western Darfur region – which led to its president, Omar Al-Bashir, being indicted for crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Court – and its perceived historic support for Islamist terrorism led to waning international support for a one Sudan solution. Equally, the death of the charismatic leader of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement, John Garang, in a helicopter crash in 2005, reduced the possibility of a negotiated single state.

Mr Garang, who became vice president following the ceasefire, was known to have sympathy for a “one country, two governments” solution. His colleagues in the SPLA identify themselves almost exclusively with separation.

The North seemed also to be resigned to secession, although it continued to make its presence felt, undermining the autonomous south’s ability to manage itself financially by paying oil revenues in Sudanese pounds, rather than US dollars, cutting the foreign exchange reserves that are vital for running an economy that runs on imports.

Many details of separation remain unresolved. Even the independent south’s name as a sovereign entity is undecided. Perhaps more significantly, there remain questions over how oil revenues will be split between North and South. Many of the oil fields are on the disputed border and in the Abyei province, which held a separate referendum and where violence was reported. Despite this, however, the referendum appeared to run without major incident.

“You’ve seen in the south a unity of purpose around the referendum, which has kind of brushed away, at least temporarily, the tensions and differences that you could see around certain southern parties,” says Jean-Baptiste Gallopin, associate analyst at risk consultancy Control Risks. “Given that there is an overwhelming support for the independence of the south within the south, it’s not surprising that the voting process would go smoothly.

“The north realises that the north and the south rely on each other for the production and transport of oil, it’s not surprising that the north would accommodate southern succession once it appeared to be inevitable.”

After independence, some large questions remain – can a government staffed by former combatants of a 50-year old liberation movement, with little experience in government and with a political legitimacy stemming exclusively from its commitment to delivering independence become a civilian administration capable of building a nation. The developmental challenges in the south are significant. The country has little remaining infrastructure and relies on vastly expensive imports. Capacity in the civil service and security forces is slim and corruption is endemic. An entire generation either fought or fled to camps in neighbouring countries, meaning that, although young, the workforce is largely lacking formal education. Investment is sorely needed, but outside of the oil sector there is little of scale on the horizon.

Furthermore, the southern consensus, which existed around opposition to northern rule, could collapse once that shared goal is met.

“The unity and the message behind the current good political climate in the south is really driven by the fact that the north is still perceived as an enemy and everyone in the south supports independence,” Mr Gallopin says. “The issues are postponed until after independence… there are still very deep rifts within the SPLM between various warlords with different ethnic constituencies. This is something we will see re-emerge in the south once it is independent.”

While economically the north of the country is stronger, its own political stability and the position of Mr Bashir as its leader could be in question post-succession. Khartoum is under sanctions and its president remains under a warrant from the ICC, and despite promises to relax certain strictures and write off some of the country’s debt mountain in exchange for cooperation over the referendum, the country remains an international pariah.

Although he has retained power and limited the influence of opposition parties in the North, the loss of the south will not be accepted by all factions within Mr Bashir’s own National Congress Party. His survival could depend on his ability to demonstrate that the deal with the international community, as well as an eventual oil sharing deal with Juba, ultimately benefit Khartoum.

“Bashir is a bit cornered, in a sense, by both the opposition – which is not in itself very significant but is growing more vocal – as well as by elements within the regime itself that are hostile to southern succession,” Mr Gallopin says. “If he succeeds in showing the constituencies within the north that it is possible for Sudan to reap the benefits of a return into the international mainstream, I would say, then he will be able to consolidate his power once again.

“If he fails to convince NCP constituencies that Sudan hasn’t been weakened by the Southern succession… then he will be threatened for sure. There are elements within the northern government that are opposed to his line. It’s really a crucial period for the north.”

The stalemate that followed the November 28 presidential election in Côte d’Ivoire remains unresolved, with an internationally-recognised government headed by opposition leader Alassane Ouattara holed up in the Golf Hotel in Abidjan, protected by a ring of United Nations peacekeepers and surrounded by armed forces remaining loyal to the defeated incumbent, Laurent Gbagbo.

Mr Gbagbo refuses to accept the result of the poll, which the UN says were fair and, even discounting disputed regions, show that Mr Ouattara gained a clear majority. Both sides have said that they are willing to negotiate, however neither seems willing to accept the other’s legitimacy and the chance of a consensus in the short term seems slim.

An attempt by former South African president Thabo Mbeki to mediate proved fruitless, and negotiations led by regional leaders, including offers of amnesty and threats of military intervention from Ecowas powers, have not broken the deadlock. John Atta-Mills, the Ghanaian president has broken ranks and suggested that his country would not wish to participate in any military action. The former Nigerian president, Olusegun Obasanjo, is the latest to try to broker a deal.

“The full spectrum of options are still open,” says Ashley Elliot, an analyst risk consultancy Control Risks. “The best case scenario is a long process of negotiations and brinkmanship. I don’t think we’ll see anything for a while, but perhaps after a couple of months some kind of messy power sharing agreement that doesn’t really solve any of the problems. That would be the best case. The worst case would be a slide into some kind of civil conflict.”

Most analysts agree that any civil conflict is unlikely to take the form of the 2002 civil war which split the country. Then, the Forces Nouvelles, a northern rebel group, had significant operational capabilities and could draw on a sizeable pool of fighters. That is no longer the case.

“The Forces Nouvelles, like many rebel movements, has gone through a lifecycle and come out the other end a rather balkanised and disaggregated organisation that just doesn’t have the ability to march on Abidjan,” Mr Elliot says. “There just isn’t a force in Côte d’Ivoire that can mobilise and get enough traction to confront Gbagbo’s monopoly on force in the south. A slide into conflict would look more sporadic, I think. You would see mob violence between pro-Gbagbo and pro-Ouattara neighbourhoods in Abidjan… and also in the western region, which has an ambient level of insecurity because the state control is so weak there.”

Reports of up to 30,000 refugees crossing the borders into Liberia and Guinea from the west of Côte d’Ivoire lend weight to fears that the region could become a flashpoint for violence.

There are two likely indicators of a shift in position, according to Mr Elliot. “One is that we haven’t seen a direct or concerted attack on the UN peacekeepers. There was one incident where a soldier was hurt in a riot, but if we were to see an attack on UN troops, I think that would change the game in many ways. That hasn’t happened, but if it did I think it would signal that Gbagbo really is digging in, and make the chances of a slide into some kind of civil conflict more likely,” he says. “Another trigger would be if we heard anything from within the military to suggest it had lost faith in Gbagbo’s position. That would take you in the other direction and indicate that a power sharing agreement is more likely. I don’t think we’ll see either of those in the next couple of weeks.”

International pressure has been high and sustained. The United Nations, which monitored the election and has backed Mr Ouattara’s claims to the presidency, has expressed serious concerns about alleged human rights abuses, and has directed peacekeepers to investigate reports of mass graves.

The international community is treading a fine line in its overt intervention. The French and other international presences are easily politicised, and could give Mr Gbagbo a further chance to brand his rival as a stooge of Western influence and undermine confidence in the election process. In 2000, Mr Ouattara, a northerner, was disqualified from contesting elections on the grounds of questions over his citizenship, and nationalist sentiments remain politically potent. Violence that resulted from Mr Ouattara’s removal from the political process and the refusal of Mr Gbagbo’s government to hold fresh elections in 2002, and the sense of disenfranchisement among northerners that led to the 2002 civil war that split the country in two. A reemergence of nationalist and ethnic divisions and the continued power of the Forces Nouvelles, the northern rebel group which backs Mr Ouattara and whose former head, Guillaume Soro, has defected to Mr Ouattara’s camp, raise the spectre of a return to civil conflict.

“[Mr Gbagbo] has already said that if the international community were to intervene then it would be tantamount to a coup against Côte d’Ivoire,” says Kissy Agyeman-Togobo, a partner at risk consultancy Songhai Advisory. “French forces and international forces are the enemy from Gbagbo’s point of view, and it definitely would play into [his] nationalist stance.”

Nevertheless, increased violence in the country or the apparent slide back to civil war could lead to an international intervention, probably from Ecowas states keen to contain instability. The size of the Ivorian armed forces alone would deter most of the country’s neighbours from taking such a step lightly, Ms Agyeman-Togobo says.

Economic measures could yet force Mr Gbagbo’s hand. The regional central bank, Banque Centrale des États de l’Afrique de l’Ouest, has handed budgetary powers to Mr Ouattara following the election, although his government’s isolation in the Golf Hotel and the split within the civil service call into question his ability to use those powers.

Although he has alternative sources of revenue through the cocoa markets, Mr Gbagbo’s ability to pay his soldiers could be undermined.

The West African country missed a $30m coupon repayment to the London Club of creditors, due on December 31 2010. Mr Gbagbo’s advisor, Ahoua Don Mello, told Bloomberg on Jan 7 that the former president had not discussed making the payment either. Even if Mr Gbagbo did authorise payment, BCEAO would be unlikely to release it. The country has a 30 day grace period in which to make payment, but the current deadlock increases the likelihood of a default. In a January 7 research note, Standard Bank analyst Samir Gadio said that, without a breakthrough and subsequent repayment, investor confidence – which is already low – would be further eroded.

“I don’t think [Mr Gbagbo] can bank on the loyalty of the army forever if there are threats to him being able to pay them,” says Ms Agyeman-Togobo. “It won’t necessarily mean a wholesale about turn, but he could face pressure from within his forces to really go to the negotiating table and sort this out.”

Even if a power sharing agreement of some form is achieved – despite the fact that there is little to suggest a consensus can be found, since both would-be president’s coalition plans exclude the other – the underlying problems that have caused and prolonged Côte d’Ivoire’s strife will not disappear.

“Those problems include a disaffected north that has no possibility of secession and a broad socio-economic decline,” Control Risks’ Mr Elliot says. “There are so many young people without jobs. Côte d’Ivoire used to be a regional economic powerhouse. It is no longer. All of these things sustain problems that will stretch beyond any patchwork political solution.”

Egypt’s parliamentary elections have been marred by widespread accounts of vote rigging, intimidation and violence as incumbent president Hosni Mubarak’s National Democratic Party won an overwhelming victory. While the elections were a foregone conclusion, the manner of the NDP’s victory could have implications for political and social stability in the run up to next year’s presidential elections, which are themselves potentially key to the country’s long term direction.

The election saw the almost total eradication from parliament of supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood, a political and social movement which serves as the de facto opposition in Egypt. The Brotherhood is banned, but tolerated to some extent, and its members have often been elected to parliament as independents. In 2005 elections, independents affiliated with the group won 88 seats out of a total of 508. In 2010, not one candidate won in the first round of voting. 26 Brotherhood candidates went to run-offs, but rather than contest further, the group withdrew from the political process. The liberal Wafd party also withdrew.

The official turnout was 25 percent, although local civil society groups say it was much lower, at around 10 percent, indicating a continued and widespread lack of faith in the democratic system.  While the strength of the democratic process in Egypt has long been in question, analysts say that this most recent election was among the worst in decades of dubious polls.

At 82, Hosni Mubarak’s health is already in question. In March, he left the country to undergo gallbladder surgery in Germany, leading to intense speculation over his ability to lead Egypt beyond presidential elections scheduled for 2011. The succession process for a president who has been in power for 30 years was never likely to be simple, however the controversy both within the NDP and wider Egyptian society over the potential coronation of Mr Mubarak’s son, Gamal has added further complexity. The sense that this period of uncertainty could strengthen the Muslim Brotherhood – the de facto opposition to the regime – may well have contributed to the decision within the government to squeeze them almost entirely out of the mainstream political process and minimise their ability to disrupt the succession. How successful this extreme move will be remains to be seen.

The elder Mr Mubarak will likely run and win in the 2011 poll, but in the medium term, should he die or become too ill to continue to govern, Gamal Mubarak’s succession is far from a foregone conclusion. The military is a major part of Egyptian political life and wields considerable influence. The current president was an air force officer, however, his son is a businessman with little experience in security issues. A perception that he is weak and incapable of dealing with the many challenges to national and regional stability could push the security forces to try to sideline him.

As Faysal Itani, deputy head of forecasting for the Middle East and North Africa at political risk consultancy Exclusive Analysis, says:  “There is a split within the National Democratic Party between Gamal Mubarak’s clique – the sort of neoliberal businessmen who have got very rich over the last couple of years and are very close to Gamal – and the military old guard that have supported Hosni Mubarak consistently, and still do, but are unhappy with the idea that Gamal will succeed him as president. They doubt that anyone from outside without security credentials will take over the Egyptian presidency.”

A candidate from within the military, such as the relatively popular chief of intelligence, Omar Suleiman, might be more palatable to the rank-and-file and even with the general public, Mr Itani says.

How the Brotherhood reacts to its official marginalisation could be important to determining the outcome of the internal struggles within the NDP. According to Steven Cook, the Hasib J. Sabbagh senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, the Brotherhood will face a period of soul searching as it debates whether to reengage with the political process ahead of the presidential elections, or whether it instead decides to become a social agitator. Either could put it in direct conflict with the regime and run counter to what Mr Cook says is the Brotherhood’s “prime directive” – survival.

Should the Brotherhood appear to be an active threat to national security, the military could use it to strengthen their grip on NDP politics and push their own candidates ahead of Gamal Mubarak, Mr Cook notes. Collusion between elements from within the military and parts of the Muslim Brotherhood in order to engineer such a situation should not be ruled out, he says. Secular, reformist opposition, such as that briefly promoted by former UN official Mohammed ElBaradei, looks unlikely to have much impact.

The prospect for civil disobedience or conflict is very real, Mr Cook says. The experience of the past few decades shows that political disenfranchisement has boiled over into revolt, and the government’s relative inability to deliver positive incentives to political opposition mean that stability is not assured in the short term.

“This is a weak regime. This is a regime that can only deploy coercion to elicit control of the population, it has no other means to do it,” Mr Cook says. “That’s a potentially dangerous situation. At some point, somebody’s going to shoot back because they can’t take it anymore.”

A muted international response – the US State Department merely said that it was “disappointed” by the election process – is based on the assumption that Egypt, while undemocratic, remains stable. As a key interlocutor on Middle Eastern issues and an economic partner to the US and Europe, western leaders have largely focused more on the country’s stability than its ability to reform. The US was understood to be unhappy about the mooted inheritance of the presidency, and its stance may have been noted in Cairo, Exclusive Analysis’ Mr Itani says. However, the US has to strike a balance between promoting its values and undermining a useful, if unpalatable partner.

“On one had the United States does not want the Muslim Brotherhood to run Egypt, but on the other hand they do not want a regime that is so deeply unpopular that it fails,” Mr Itani says.

That preoccupation with stability may have led to a short-sighted perspective on the political situation in the country, according to CFR’s Mr Cook. “[In Washington] we all say that Egypt is stable for now, but that’s based on a kind of flimsy, backward looking view of things. You have a whole host of indicators that would suggest maybe it’s not stable. It’s certainly weak, and weakness can breed instability,” he says. The silence stands in contrast, he notes, from the last Bush administration, which applied considerably more pressure and was more vocal in its disapproval.

“When [George W Bush] made forthright statements about political change in the region, and particularly Egypt, it had effect,” he says. “There are some lasting effects of that in terms of the discourse about reform and change, which he helped change for the better. It’s not like it wasn’t there before but it came out into the open in ways that it hadn’t been before, and the regime hasn’t been able to walk that back. It hasn’t necessarily protected bloggers and journalists and editors and things like that, but it’s out there and it’s probably the most important part of Egypt’s political discourse. I think that the Obama administration thought that they were getting unnecessarily wrapped around the axle if they were to speak very publicly on this and create problems, at least in tone, with an important ally in the region.”

The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development has laid out an ambitious “utopian” vision for a post-Washington Consensus world in its 2010 report on the least developed countries.

The existing international development architecture and the system of LDC-specific international support mechanisms are not effective in delivering poverty reduction, and need to be reoriented to focus on productive capacity development, the report: Towards a New International Development Architecture for LDCs, says. The international community needs to use the examples of China and other East Asian economies and broaden its understanding of the component parts of development if it is to assist LDCs. Governments in these countries must also focus on developmental governance.

This new architecture must look beyond trade and aid considerations and incorporate an appreciation of the effects of international commodity regimes, technology and climate change, the report says. Additionally, the international community needs to alter its perceptions to allow discussions on the LDCs to focus more on potential than on need.

“I think there is a tendency to see the poorest countries in terms of humanitarian need and not to look at their productive potential,” says Charles Gore, the report’s lead author. “The basis of our approach is the countries themselves and the international community should be trying to leverage that productive potential. Now, that is quite a big difference in perception, and it has quite concrete implications for the role of the state at the national level. The state has got to play a more developmental role – of the type that was played in East Asia – with the state not taking over the economy, but rather working with the private sector to achieve development goals.”

An enabling international architecture needs to be built for this to happen, Mr Gore says.

“In this new international development architecture, aid still matters but it’s used in a different way, and aid must be complemented by various other economic regimes and specific support mechanisms for the poorest countries in other areas. People obviously are looking at this in terms of aid and trade, but we go beyond that to talk about the commodity regime, technology and climate change as being three major pillars of this international architecture.”

Climate change is a transversal issue, which cuts across a broader range of challenges. However, Unctad felt compelled to separate it as an individual pillar from aid as it requires an additional effort and resources.

The proposals to address international commodity price volatility, which are part of a broader discussion of the role of commodities in the LDCs, include a suggestion to introduce taxes on commodity derivatives, with the levels changing dependent on market volatility. This would, the report notes, act as a disincentive to speculation.

“We’re in a situation where the commodity prices are being strongly affected by commodity price speculation, and that has a major impact on people at the end of the value chain. For the ones with the least bargaining power, who are living very close to subsistence, this is an issue,” Mr Gore says.

With the flaws in international financial regulation, and the institutions that debate it, highlighted by the failure to reach a meaningful consensus at the G20 in Seoul, these proposals are among the many in the report that Mr Gore recognises as “utopian”.

Others are more practical and possible in the short term. On technology, the perception that innovation and technological advancement in least developed countries is solely a process of transfer from more developed markets needs to be overcome, he explains.

“All of the developed countries have technology funds of various kinds which are related to promoting their domestic enterprises.  The emerging economies are also doing this. Brazil is doing this, Chile is doing this, this is part of the new model that emerged after the Washington Consensus, and what we’re saying is that the poorest countries should be doing this as well,” he says.

The report proposes a global version of the “Spark” programme, begun in the mid-1980s in China. This government initiative gave grants and incentives to local enterprises engaged in innovative areas of the economy. A global version, focusing on could deploy aid money into technology funds in LDCs.

Wholesale operational changes to the functioning of international development bodies will be required to create this architecture. While major institutions are using more of the language of potential and partnership, they are not set up to deliver on their goals, according to Mr Gore.

“I think an important question is, can you have a good development partnership in a bad development architecture?” he asks. “The donors are working with the partnership word. Now, partnership is hugely significant as a concept, but getting the architecture right is extremely significant. The aid architecture is not right at the moment, and because the aid architecture is not right, the partnership isn’t working. You need these institutional changes in order to achieve mutually agreed goals.”

Donor governments will need to overcome their nationalistic concerns about the rise of developing countries if they are to fully embrace the new mechanisms of the post-Washington Consensus world, Mr Gore notes. The political sensitivity in developed markets facing jobless recoveries from the financial crisis means that governments must make an intellectual leap of faith to believe in the long term benefits of global growth.

“There is a political fear that is symbolised by the rise of China,” he says. “Essentially, the idea of using aid to create mini-Chinas everywhere is seen as cutting off our nose to spite our face, but it’s based on a misunderstanding of the dynamic potential of how a capitalist system works. Unfortunately, this misunderstanding… is politically very dominant. Unfortunately I think the developed countries will perhaps make a historic mistake by having this nationalist reflex at a moment when you’ve actually got to think of things globally and you’ve got to look at this as a kind of win-win potential.”

The power of having successful examples of development, such as China, at the table in discussions around the LDCs, should not be underestimated, Mr Gore says, and must be brought into the mainstream of poverty reduction.

“If you want to reduce poverty in a society where you have 60 percent of the people or 70 percent of the people living on less than a dollar a day, that task is very different from if you reduce poverty in a society where only 15 percent of the population is. It’s a majoritarian poverty reduction issue, rather than a minoritarian poverty reduction issue.

“Unfortanately, the donor community has been working with this minoritarian poverty reduction issue, so the World Bank goes into social protection. But what China shows is how you get hundreds of millions of people out of poverty, not thousands captured by safety nets. You get hundreds of millions of people out of poverty by promoting a structural transformation, by what we call developing the productive capacities. And in a sense, the understanding of that must percolate through.”