Since early 2012, a violent conflict has been brewing in Mali, one that has forced the international community to consider whether or not this North African country is another Afghanistan in the making.

There are plenty of positive signs on both the military and political front indicating that Somalia is about to turn a corner after two decades of instability and conflict.

There has been a military coup in Mali.  On the 22nd of March, military officers arrested the president, suspended the Constitution, and imposed a curfew without any resistance.  The troops responsible for protecting the institutions were complicit in the coup.

With the rebel net tightening around a besieged Tripoli, it won’t be long before the NATO-rebel campaign to oust Colonel Gaddafi comes to a close. Now, the next battle for Libya can begin.

As Africa’s newest country sets about building up its own army, political institutions and identity, the threat of renewed conflict with the North still looms.

Resolution 1973, the UN Security Council resolution that implemented a no-fly zone over Libya, has been passed against the backdrop of a complex web of interests.

One might have gotten the impression that the wave of democratization which started in Tunisia and quickly spread to Egypt was destined to sweep through the entire region, leaving nothing an autocratic resonance autocracy in its wake.

While official results from the referendum in Sudan will not be revealed until sometime in February, it has become somewhat of a foregone conclusion that Africa’s largest country is on the verge of splitting.

Electoral deadlock in the Ivory Coast is threatening to once again cast the world’s largest cocoa producer into a spiral of civil war.

The African Union has formally requested that the United Nations Security Council support a naval and air blockade of Somalia in the hope that such a move will cut off the flow of material aid to al-Shabab.