Power Sharing

Between 1990 and 2009, Africa had 17 attempts at power-sharing in an effort to retire civil wars and political disagreements. The countries that have experienced the signing of power-sharing agreements are; Mali, Cote d’ivore, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Chad, Sudan, Central African Republic, Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo, Angola, Burundi, Kenya, Somalia, Djibouti, Comoros, Zimbabwe and more recently Guinea-Conakry, Madagascar.

In early 2008 the Kenyan power sharing deal was brokered.
http://chimurenganewsroom.blogspot.com/2010/10/image-bank-power-sharing.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7268903.stm
http://therevolutionarytimes.blogspot.com/2008/03/look-behind-kenyas-power-sharing.html
http://www.theroot.com/views/kenyas-power-sharing-accord-some-nagging-questions

In May 2008 Zanzibar was in deadlock of more than a year in forming a power-sharing government. Talks between the ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM, or Party of the Revolution) and the opposition Civic United Front (CUF) faltered earlier this year, leaving the Zanzibar islands, where politics have often turned violent, in limbo.
http://chimurenganewsroom.blogspot.com/2010/09/tanzania-leader-urges-talks-on-zanzibar.html
http://africa.reuters.com/top/news/usnBAN648543.html

In July 2008 Negotiations began in Zim
2008 Zimbabwean power-sharing agreement here: http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/2008_Zimbabwean_power-sharing_agreement

Côte d'Ivoire young lions (http://chimurenganewsroom.blogspot.com/2010/11/young-lions.html) and Sahrawi (http://chimurenganewsroom.blogspot.com/2010/12/sahrawi-africas-last-colony.html) also relate to this

More info
"Power-Sharing in Deeply Divided Places," John E. Sawyer Seminars : Brendan O'Leary, Jonathan Steinberg, Rita Barnard, Clark McCauley (Bryn Mawr), Arancha Garcia del Soto, Monroe Price, and William Burke-White

Issues and Dilemmas of Multi-Party Democracy in Africa
by Seyoum Hameso
http://ipoaa.com/issues_dilemmas_multi_party_democracy.htm

Power Sharing in Africa
Coming out of a two year project on Power-sharing in Africa for the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, CSCW has produced 6 extensive reports and 8 policy briefs on the subject in 2008.
http://www.prio.no/CSCW/News/NewsItem/?oid=31418578

Articles:
http://www.financialgazette.co.zw/comment/6491-delinquency-of-power-sharing-in-africa.html

http://www.isn.ethz.ch/isn/Current-Affairs/Security-Watch/Detail/?lng=en&id=97653

http://allafrica.com/stories/201004120862.html

http://www.voanews.com/english/news/africa/pan/Power-Sharing-Governments-in-Africa-Face-Limitations-89459832.html

http://hup.sub.uni-hamburg.de/giga/afsp/article/view/190/190

Young Lions

"The Young Patriots represent a new kind of African success story. They’re celebrated by many young people in Abidjan for beating and cheating a system gone rancid. With the corrupt 'old fathers' refusing to get out of the way, and with all the old channels to success—emigration, foreign study, state employment, family connections—blocked, the new hero is a young trickster with a talent for self-promotion. The model is no longer the formal bureaucratic style of the French colonizer; it’s the loud, unrestrained style that everyone in Ivory Coast calls American." Wrote George Packer in the The New Yorker in 2003.

As Packer notes: "the Young Patriot leaders, local stars in their twenties who were dressed like American hip-hop singers: gold chains, tracksuits, floppy hats. Their scowling bodyguards sat behind them, wearing muscle shirts and mirror glasses; a few were armed with Kalashnikov rifles. Sitting quietly and pathetically in the back rows were the neighborhood elders. In the traditional hierarchy of African villages, the old are elaborately deferred to by the young. Here the elders had no role other than to applaud while the Young Patriots took turns swaggering and jigging out on the speaker’s platform and the loudspeakers blasted reggae or zouglou, the homegrown pop music of the movement."

Five years later Young Patriots leader Charles Blé Goudé and once rebel leader Guillaume Soro who led the Patriotic Movement of Côte d'Ivoire and later the New Forces have suited up and transformed themselves into a savvy politicians, who play leading roles in Ivoirian politics.

A few days after Soro's 36th Birthday we look at the rise of a new generation of young lions in African politics.

See the Al Jazeera special report, An Ivorian miracle? here.

Tanzania: Leader urges talks on Zanzibar coalition

Tanzanian President Jakaya Kikwete has urged the country's main opposition party to return to talks to break deadlock of more than a year in forming a power-sharing government in semi-autonomous Zanzibar. Talks between the ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM, or Party of the Revolution) and the opposition Civic United Front (CUF) faltered earlier this year, leaving the Zanzibar islands, where politics have often turned violent, in limbo.

2008-05-16
http://africa.reuters.com/top/news/usnBAN648543.html

ON THE CAMPAIGN TRAIL/ ELECTIONS

1. Dawn Dusk or Night: A Year with Nicolas Sarkozy
Yasmina Reza April 22, 2008
In 2006, Yasmina Reza, the most celebrated playwright in France, asked Nicolas Sarkozy a simple question: Would he allow her to spend the next year with him and his team as he campaigned for the French presidency? His response was an unqualified yes. To the alarm of his advisers, and the consternation of many of her friends, who feared she was making a pact with the devil, she picked up her notebook and her pencil, and off she went.

2. Obama Election

3. African elections

4. Power sharing