Now, when the Russian media can count publications about the situation in African countries on the fingers of one hand, and even fewer good essays and review articles are published, the importance for the Russian reader of the quarterly "Africa Renewal"published in New York by the UN Public Information Division with the support of UNDP, UNICEF and UNIFEM in English and French* especially increased. The magazine can serve as a reliable assistant to anyone who is interested in the current development of the African continent, especially its economy and social relations, as well as the approach to African problems directly by the UN and its specialized agencies. Information on this issue, of course, occupies a special place in the quarterly.

The main complaint that could be made to him is the small volume of each issue and the rarity of publication. I think this is due to the small staff of the editorial office, although the qualifications of its employees and their knowledge of the main subject of the publication deserve the highest assessment.

Unfortunately, the magazine has stopped publishing applications on individual topics or countries. For example, an app dedicated to Mozambique was very interesting. However, over time, they began to be replaced by issues with thematic collections dedicated to major African problems or countries.

The magazine devoted one of the best such collections to Angola (Africa Recovery, May 1995). The degree of destruction of its economy and social infrastructure is difficult to describe. The author of the article, research scientist Tony Hedges, notes: "The social fabric of Angola has been deeply affected by almost two decades of war. By accelerating the normal process of exodus from villages to cities, the conflict has removed a significant part of the rural population from their usual environment, condemning most of them to extreme poverty. The dramatic consequences of the civil war were the rapid urbanization of Angolan society and its disintegration, as hundreds of villages were partially or completely depopulated. About 1.25 million people, about 10% of the current population of 12.7 million, are classified by the UN as internally displaced (deslocados), while more than 300 thousand are considered internally displaced. the refugees have taken refuge in neighboring countries." According to the author, banditry has become commonplace in rural areas, while the number of violent crimes in urban areas has increased dramatically. The number of schools that began to increase after Angola's declaration of independence began to decline sharply after the resumption of the civil war. In Malange Province, for example, only 34 primary schools out of the 323 that had previously existed were operating in 1995. The state of the country's economy was clearly indicated by one figure: by November 1995, inflation had reached 2040%.

Yet the Government has not given up in its efforts to overcome the dramatic consequences of civil strife. In 1994, a Social and economic program was adopted, which became one of the first in the reform policy that began to be implemented. At present, the internal situation in the country has been significantly improved, although huge problems still remain. Among them, a special place is occupied by the elimination of " silent

* Its predecessor was Africa Recovery, a magazine published in the same format since 1987; since July 2004, it has been called Africa Renewal.

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killers " - mines, of which about 10 million (almost one mine for each inhabitant) are scattered on Angolan soil.

In the following years, the magazine continued to track emerging civil, ethnic and other conflicts, drawing international attention to them. Although the fighting has subsided in Angola and Mozambique, it has continued in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) (formerly Zaire), and has gained particular strength in Liberia and Sierra Leone. The entire world was shocked by the genocide in Rwanda that occurred in the spring and summer of 1994, when about 800 thousand people were killed. As one review article in Africa Recovery (April-September 1994) pointed out, "the Rwandan crisis was a blow to African development." Its waves swept through the surrounding African countries. At one time, there were over 2 million refugees in the DRC. refugees from Rwanda. More than 550,000 people have been displaced in tiny Burundi, including refugees from neighboring Rwanda.

Reflecting on the Rwandan tragedy a decade later, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan remarked:: "There can be no more binding duty than the prevention of genocide. The events in Rwanda that took place 10 years ago are particularly shameful. It is clear that the international community had the capacity to prevent these events, but failed to show determination" (Africa Recovery, April, 2004).

However, in Liberia and Sierra Leone, the UN acted more decisively and consistently, although it encountered considerable resistance. With particular force, a phenomenon was revealed that revealed itself with frightening completeness in these countries. We are talking about the involvement of children in intra-African armed conflicts.

A certain tactic of involving children in armed struggle emerged in the early 1990s in sub-Saharan Africa, DRC, Angola, and Mozambique. Its organizers initially sought a complete separation of children from their families, forcing them to participate in attacks on their relatives and friends. Thus, the children cut off all blood ties and cut off their path to return home. In addition, they constantly received drugs, so as not to experience any moral shock, participating in monstrous atrocities.

A survey of children conducted in Angola in 1995 found that 66% of them had witnessed people being killed, 91% had seen dead bodies, 67% had witnessed torture, beatings, and torture of people, and more than two-thirds had experienced events that were fraught with death for them (Africa Recovery, December, 1995). From 1980 to 1988, Angola lost 330,000 children to war - related causes, while Mozambique lost 490,000.

With regard to Liberia and Sierra Leone, in a report dated 2 June 2003, Kofi Annan said: "Liberia remains the epicenter of ongoing endemic instability, which seriously affects the political and humanitarian landscape, security not only in the Mono River Union subgroup (Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone), but also in a large part of the country. West Africa" (Africa Recovery, July, 2003).

President Taylor of Liberia, who was charged by the Special Court for Sierra Leone with numerous crimes against humanity, helped to form the so-called Revolutionary United Front (ROF) in the country, which adopted the methods of terror and intimidation of the population adopted in Liberia. In fact, it was a semi-bandit organization that sought to lay hands on the diamond deposits in Sierra Leone. Its leader, former Sergeant Foday Sanko, introduced in his units the practice of chopping off the hands of captured prisoners, even women and children.

The famous American journalist Margaret A. Nowitzki, who served as director of the UN Information Center for Ghana and Sierra Leone, writes in her article "Saving war-traumatized children" (Africa Recovery, July, 2000), in particular, about a three-year-old girl Maimuna, whose mother was killed by a ROF soldier and her right arm was cut off. Loktya: "Maimuna and numerous children like her, like thousands of other young people abducted and included in the Sierra Leonean rebel armies over the past decade, do not know what a normal childhood is. During the years of their formation, they lived in the role of victims, and even performers of monstrous atrocities... According to the most conservative estimates, 15 thousand children were used in the conflicts in Liberia and Sierra Leone. But this number is just the tip of the iceberg." I think this fate of children in modern sub-Saharan Africa represents the most terrible page in its history.

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There are, however, some successes on the way to resolving long-standing internal conflicts. For example, a long analytical article by Ernst Harsch (Africa Recovery, April, 2005) is devoted to reaching an agreement that ended the 22-year-old armed confrontation that took place in the southern province of Senegal, Casamance. The author notes that two-thirds of the population of the region geographically and ethnically remote from Senegal, the Gambia, are Diols, while in most of the country they are Walofs, of which only 5% in Casamance. In the early 1970s, a severe drought hit all of sub-Saharan West Africa, pushing Walofs and other northerners to move to the fertile lands of Casamanza, where the humid tropical climate mitigated the consequences of the terrible disaster. At the same time, the country began to implement land reform, which undermines traditional land relations and caused considerable irritation in the region.

In December 1982, a large protest demonstration with a large number of women took place in the administrative center of the province of Ziginshor, which was dispersed by the police and accompanied by numerous arrests. A year later, in the same city, there was an even more powerful demonstration of the population; then, for the first time, there were calls for the independence of the region. This time, the army intervened. According to official figures, about 25 demonstrators were killed (according to other sources, the number of victims was much higher). Perhaps the war would have continued even further, if not for the fatigue of the provincial population and favorable changes in Senegal to resolve the conflict. Elected in 2000 as its president, Abdoulaye Ul said in one of his first speeches that stopping the bloodshed in the southern province would be his "top priority." In Casamance, traditional leaders, women's and youth unions, and intellectuals increasingly supported peace talks. As a result, despite initial difficulties, the parties sat down at the negotiating table, which led to a peace agreement on December 30, 2004.

Of course, compared to what Mozambique, Angola, Zaire, Liberia, and Sierra Leone experienced, the Casamance conflict might have seemed insignificant. At the same time, the same factors played a role in its deployment that were more powerful and painful in other areas of the continent: ethnic tensions, rivalries over rural land and urban jobs, and an initially inadequate response from the authorities, who saw the solution in the use of brute force. It was also typical to resolve conflicts through negotiations, pressure from the masses tired of military actions, and mutual political and economic concessions.

The analysis of such conflict situations is all the more important because similar outbreaks continue to occur in other parts of the continent. In particular, in February 2003, a severe ethnic conflict broke out in the Sudanese province of Darfur. The two main rebel movements - the Sudan Liberation Army and the Justice and Equality Movement-have accused the central Government in Khartoum of supporting "Arab" nomads in their clashes with African farmers. For their part, the Arab population of the region formed its own movement, which assisted the army in its punitive operations against the Negro farmers. For a detailed description of the extremely dramatic situation in Darfur and the attempts made by the United Nations and the African Union to resolve it, see Itai Madamombe (Africa Renewal, January, 2005).

It is interesting to note that the West's desire to place the blame for the dramatic events taking place in Darfur solely on Sudan met with resistance from African countries, which accused the West of"double standards". As is often the case in such ethnic feuds with socio-economic implications, monstrous atrocities are committed by both sides almost equally. And it deserves special study that participants in such dramas, as a rule, discard the most elementary norms of traditional morality.

Two articles by Ernst Harsch (Africa Recovery, Jule, 2003) were devoted to the situation in the Republic of Ivory Coast. Until recently, a model of economic prosperity and political balance, this country, as the author writes, somewhat unexpectedly turned into another hotbed of intense ethnic confrontation. Perhaps the Bickford cord was the Liberian events, from where the first rebel group arrived in Ivory Coast. Under pressure, first of all, from the African public, as well as from UN members, in particular France, the Government of President Laurent Gbagbo and the association of rebel groups known as NA-

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They are called "New Forces", and from time to time they come to certain peace agreements, which, however, are constantly violated. In addition, the crisis in Côte d'Ivoire, according to the author, has had a severe impact on the economic situation of a number of neighboring States, in particular Burkina Faso and Mali, which have lost the ability to export their goods through Abidjan.

The events in Liberia were the first hotbed from which fire began to spread across West Africa. The Government of Guinea, which is neighboring Liberia, has had some difficulty in thwarting the efforts of the Liberian authorities to drag the country into a maelstrom of civil strife. The failure of this venture probably accelerated the formation of a "revolutionary front" in Liberia to attack Sierra Leone. Next, an attempt was made to destabilize neighboring Cote d'Ivoire-ar, which Burkina Faso seems to have joined to support its compatriots. Apparently, it was a success. And in 2004, in the Ghanaian capital of Accra, the local newspaper, the Ghanaian Chronicle, published an article entitled " Rwanda ten years later. Can this happen in Ghana?" A typical question...

When you read Africa Renewal magazine, you can see the huge role that UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan personally plays in clearing the historical path of the African continent from various obstacles, in particular from destructive wars and ethnic strife. It is quite understandable that he is particularly concerned about the fate of ordinary people who find themselves involved in these events against their will. Speaking in Geneva, Kofi Annan said: "We will have only a small hope of preventing genocide and reassuring those who live in fear of its outbreak if the people who committed these most heinous of crimes are left at large without being held accountable. It is therefore vital to build and maintain legal systems, both national and international, so that over time people will see that such crimes do not go unpunished" (Africa Renewal, July 2004).

Perhaps partly because of the Ghanaian-born Kofi Annan's special attention to Africa, the magazine does not just describe the situation post factum in certain areas, but in some cases tries to prevent its dangerous exacerbation. In particular, the journal published an article by Kingsley Kubeyinje and Tony Neznaniya from Lagos on the alarming situation in the Niger Delta, Nigeria's oil treasure trove (Africa Recovery, June, 1999). The authors note that Nigeria gets about 90% of its oil from this area. However, the national minorities living there (Itsekiri, Urhobo, Ijo, Ibibio, Ogoni, Kalabari, Efik, Ikwerre, Ilaji) do not receive any significant deductions from the wealth produced on their land, but, on the contrary, see their land and water resources that provide them with a livelihood, they are systematically polluted. Less than 5% of the funds received from oil are spent on the needs of the region. There is no drinkable water, no good roads, no electricity, and no good schools. Riots were already breaking out in the region, but they were scattered and quickly suppressed by the troops. In particular, the leader of the Ogoni people, a prominent writer Ken Saro-Wiwa, was killed. The article sounded like a warning that a powerful explosion was possible. And in late 2005 - early 2006, the forecast was confirmed: the authorities managed to "restore order"with considerable difficulty.

It is noteworthy that the conflicts taking place in Africa are mainly ethnic in nature, and even in those cases, as was the case in Angola and Mozambique, when in their most protracted nature there was a clash of interests of powers far from Africa. But even those feuds, where it is difficult to suspect overseas involvement, sometimes last for decades and cause huge damage to the population. The fact is that the economic roots of the emerging contradictions are more or less clear, they can be identified and ultimately eliminated. On the contrary, ethnic differences are extremely difficult to treat politically, because they hide reasons for hostility that have very long-standing historical "justifications" or religious, sometimes theological reasons that are simply difficult to outline. The elimination of preconceptions that have already been established and entrenched in the collective consciousness is an extremely difficult and always time-consuming process. And most importantly: the very awareness of the need to get rid of such prejudices should receive active support from the most morally authoritative part of society, from its spiritual and intellectual leaders. And this is rare.

However, in recent years, ethno-national problems on the African continent have somewhat receded into the background, and the tasks of economic and political development have come to the fore.-

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ractera. While there are signs of economic recovery in some parts of sub-Saharan Africa, the overall situation in Africa remains extremely difficult, with few successes and huge challenges. This explains why the main focus of the editorial staff of Africa Renewal magazine is focused on economic and political issues. In their coverage, the magazine strives to maintain objectivity, which is certainly not easy today, when one-linedness of assessments and judgments is in fashion. I would like to note that sometimes the magazine's articles allow us to see the existing lack of understanding of African approaches in the West, and in Africa - a lack of understanding of the positions of European countries.

The situation in Africa was particularly difficult in the early 1990s, probably due to the collapse of the Soviet Union and the departure of a powerful political player from the continent. So what happened? First of all, the volume of financial assistance provided to African countries by various States has sharply decreased. In addition, its provision has become linked to many conditions. For example, in an article by Kristina Katsuris and Roel Leishli, "Aid and Debt Relief for Favorites" (Africa Renewal, April-September, 1994), it was noted that Finland, Switzerland, and the United States had made particularly large cuts in aid; it had also been "significantly cut" by Canada, Germany, Italy, Japan, and Norway and Sweden. To receive aid, African countries must meet a number of strict conditions, most notably the requirement to promote a market-oriented economy, democratization and good governance.

In conclusion, the authors write: "Many African countries are already proving that their economic and political circumstances make it impossible to accept all the conditions imposed on them due to their growing abundance. In this situation, the list of reformers to whom donors tend to show generosity will become shorter and shorter."

Still, the speed with which the West took advantage of the collapse of the Soviet Union to impose a favorable development model on Africa is striking. This course was initiated by the United States, which dogmatized the demands of a market-oriented economy and multiparty democracy. The magazine did not hide the fact that this approach was met with harsh criticism from African states. At the North-South round table held in Johannesburg in October 1994, which brought together experts from developing countries and the North, Richard Jolly, Chairman of the organization, presented a report that noted, inter alia: "The speed with which markets were opening up in the developing world in general, especially in Africa, is often very slow. it led to the destruction of local production and productive forces. Too often, the pressure for a market-oriented economy has been accompanied by an unregulated market ideology, which has harmed the weakest trading partner. The opening of markets within Africa and between Africa and the rest of the world should not be imposed, but should be the result of negotiations" (Africa Renewal, December 1995).

I remember the first years after the conquest of independence by African countries. At that time, numerous political parties existed in the vast majority of the newly independent States. But pretty quickly, they started to disappear. In some places, this happened as a result of harsh restrictive measures taken against them, and in some places they died out because they became the mouthpiece of purely tribal, local interests at a time when African countries were facing national challenges. Tribal parties rapidly lost the support of voters and gradually faded away. The question arises: why can't this situation, which leads to a tribalist split in society and the destruction of an apparently fragile civil unity, be repeated? Isn't this the situation we are seeing today in Ivory Coast, which is trapped by the emergence of numerous politicized tribalist groups?

In fact, the question of democracy is not the same as the problem of multiparty. Democracy may well exist within the framework of national fronts, which were once popular. The essence of the problem lies in the political culture of society, the degree of development of national identity, which can prevent the emergence of the most important obstacle to democracy - the emergence of prerequisites for personality cults. And such cults are quite capable of being born within multi-party systems, reducing the rights of peoples to one main right - the kneeling reverence of the party leader.

An interesting response to Western demands for rapid democratization of African States was given by the then Secretary-General of the Organization of African Unity, Salim Ahmed Salim, at the international conference on African Prospects in the 1990s: "Democracy

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not a revelation. How it is expressed, what specific form it is given, varies from society to society. Therefore, we must avoid the temptation to decree the so-called perfect model of democracy and not export it in bulk or impose it on another society... To a large extent, Africa responds to the international situation created by others and is very often unable to maneuver. If we look at things honestly, Africa is a victim of an international order that is both undemocratic and unfair" (Africa Recovery, July-September, 1990).

Although in the practical sphere, such speeches did not immediately find a response and usually remained unanswered, as if the criticism contained in them was insignificant, it caused a certain echo. Partly because the catastrophic situation of the sub-Saharan continent continued to deteriorate rapidly, despite the most "democratic" prescriptions. "The economic downturn is so severe that it will take several decades before the per capita income that existed in 1970 will be restored," the participants of the round table in Johannesburg noted.

The entire 1990s were a time of severe trials for Africa, although it was then that some long-standing civil strife was finally resolved and the prospect of reconciliation with the participation of African countries in such long-standing abscesses as in Liberia, Sierra Leone or the DRC was outlined. The magazine regularly highlighted the growing determination of African countries themselves to find ways to overcome emerging challenges. To a large extent, this position was predetermined by the fact that the growing lack of understanding of the West's position on the continent in recent years began to transform into growing dissatisfaction with its course. Commenting on this sentiment, Africa Recovery (June 2001) wrote in a review article that African leaders ' intentions to rely on their own efforts and resources "reflected their growing frustration with the help and advice offered to Africa by its traditional donors, anger at the continent's lagging behind the opportunities created by globalization, and a sense that something needed to be done." change fundamentally to break Africa out of the cycle of stunted growth and accelerating impoverishment."

Along with disillusionment with the West, the long-standing idea of the need to unite the entire potential of the continent to solve its problems was revived. At a meeting of finance ministers in Algeria in May 2000, Zimbabwe's Finance Minister Simba Makoni warned African countries not to use their own energy in separate initiatives. Senegalese President Abdoulaye Oade said Africa's previous hopes for aid and loans had "completely failed". As highlighted in the magazine's issue, "African leaders are increasingly critical of the established practice of aid by major donor countries and international agencies, which they view as paternalistic, arrogant, and overwhelmed by so many conditions that Africans are left with only limited space for their own initiatives." At the same time, it should be noted that the mood of the African public, especially trade unions, was even more sharply negative about the course of Western countries.

In early 2001, a group of African Presidents put forward the idea of a New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD), which was approved by African heads of State at their meeting in July of the same year. Africa Recovery (September, 2002) set out three critical conditions for Africa's progress: first, peace, security, democracy and good political governance; second, improved economic and corporate governance; and third, regional cooperation and integration. In addition, the journal identified priority areas that require special attention and active action by African countries.: 1) infrastructure, especially roads, railways and energy systems connecting neighboring countries; 2) communication and information technology; 3) humanitarian development with a priority of education and health, including improving labor skills; 4) agriculture; 5) promotion of a wider range of manufactured and exported goods with a view to opening up the markets of developed countries. countries for African exports.

This plan has become a kind of foundation for pan-African efforts, not only in the economic sphere, but also in the social one. True, among the African public, it met with quite harsh criticism, but in the West it met with a positive response. While aid to Africa declined by about 35% in the 1990s, it has now started to increase, although African countries are still struggling to overcome trade barriers.-

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barriers created by Western countries. In September 2002, at the WTO ministerial talks in Cancun, Mexico (Africa Renewal, October, 2003), attempts by a number of African delegations to open the markets of developed countries to their products were disrupted by these barriers. Although Africa's share of global exports, according to the magazine, is only 2%, the failure in Cancun was a serious blow for it, especially since its traditional export products have been actively cultivated in Asia and Latin America over the past decades, facing fierce competition from there.

Since its inception, the magazine has written about the problem of debt of African countries, payments for which have long been a heavy burden on their budgets. Today is a psychological moment when the long-standing hardships began to seem difficult to bear to the African public opinion. An example is the situation of Ivory Coast, and at a time of relative economic prosperity (Africa Recovery, July, 1997). In 1996, the country's external debt, including private loan debt, was $ 18.5 billion, or 446% of the average annual export revenue over the past three years. External debt reached 148% of gross national income. In 1995, its maintenance cost the country 38% of total expenditures and 46% of government revenues.

Servicing the continent's external debt as a whole is significantly more expensive every year - $ 36 billion in 1997 compared to $ 26 billion in 1989. The debt itself has steadily increased from $ 176.9 billion in 1990 to $ 230.1 billion in 1998. from $ 18.8 billion in 1990." up to 13.5 billion in 1998 ."

The problem of debt, however complex, would not be so painful if it were not for numerous political, economic, cultural and social factors. In order to give the reader the most complete and concrete picture of the difficulties of the real situation of African countries, the journal published Carol Collins ' extensive review of Zaire (Africa Recovery, May, 1996). The author of the article noted that "a low share of GNP per capita has made Zaire the fourth-poorest country in the world, even though it boasts the world's richest deposits of diamonds, cobalt and copper, the world's second-largest forest reserve, and some of Africa's most fertile agricultural land." As is often the case, the richest countries in terms of natural resources lack what might be called the potential of national will to use them effectively for national development. In conclusion of his review, K. Collins cites two statistical figures: the average life expectancy in the country is 52 years, and the death rate at birth is 120 children per thousand born. The numbers are monstrous. And one small sketch taken by a journalist in Mbuji-Mayi, the administrative center of Kasai Province: "In this city with a population of half a million people, there is no electricity, and many roads turn into rivers after the rains. Enterprising young people often stop drivers and demand a kind of "myto" from them - to fill up potholes and potholes on different sections of the road."

Speaking to the journalist, Bruno Lokuta Luengo, Vice-president of the Voice of the Voiceless, a Zaire-based human rights organization, said: "The situation in which people live is worse than during the war years. People are dying of hunger, malaria, and diseases that we once got rid of are coming back."

Although the situation of the continent's poorest countries is desperate, as can be seen at least in the example of the DRC, they still need to prove to the IBRD and the IMF, as well as to the Paris Club, that this is true. They should also prove that their policy course meets certain strict conditions: the implementation of economic recovery, the introduction of a market-oriented economy, transparency of government decisions, etc. The suggestion that the debtor countries should have mutual control over each other was greeted with delight by the creditor countries, as if in mockery. Finally, debtor countries should have made available to their creditors a poverty reduction strategy plan that they had adopted with the participation of non-governmental organizations. Countries such as France, for example, have added their own conditions to this: a debt write-off offer, whereby the debtors pay it all their debts, and it pays them back in the form of gifts going to certain projects, naturally carried out by French enterprises and companies (Africa Recovery, July, 2000).

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However, as they say, "the process has started", although not without huge pressure from the international community. One example. Back in August 1998, the magazine reported that the association of non-governmental organizations, churches of various faiths, trade unions, other organizations and individuals "Jubilee-2000", which has its branches in the leading countries of the world, is seeking: to cancel debts that cannot be repaid for various objective reasons; to ensure the integrity and transparency of the state budget. transparency in the debt repayment negotiation process; that the proceeds from debt reduction are diverted to help alleviate the plight of the poorest in debtor countries; and that the role of civil society in determining the terms of debt reduction and debt repayment is enhanced. In its brochure, the Jubilee 2000 movement emphasized that for every dollar of aid, Africa paid $ 1.31 in debt service in 1996.

According to Africa Renewal magazine (July 2005), a significant change in attitudes towards the problems of the most indebted poor countries occurred in 2005, when the UN Millennium Development Declaration in January called for doubling the amount of aid provided to the world's poorest countries. In March of the same year, at a meeting of the European Commission on Africa in Scotland, chaired by British Prime Minister Tony Blair, a similar position was expressed: Africa will need twice as much foreign aid to invest in improving the lives of the poorest groups of the population and to accelerate economic growth. Under the NEPAD framework, Africa should strengthen democracy, fight corruption and increase the success rate of its own efforts. A joint report by the World Bank and the Navy stated that development aid needs to double in the next five years to support the Millennium Development Goals program. By 2003, aid to Africa as a whole reached $ 26.3 billion.

New, albeit modest, opportunities for debt relief have not opened up for all African countries in need, but only for a few - Benin, Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Madagascar, Mali, Niger, Rwanda, Senegal, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia. This happened as a result of the decision of the Group of Eight to cancel their debt to international and some regional financial institutions, such as the World Bank, the Navy, and the African Development Bank.

At the same time, the magazine noted a certain disappointment of African countries with the decisions taken in Scotland.

Even before the debt crisis subsided, a new scourge hit the African continent - hunger combined with AIDS. One of the first to reveal the relationship that exists between these two phenomena is Kofi Annan, who drew attention to the fact that sub-Saharan Africa has had to deal with both drought and the AIDS epidemic: "This is not a coincidence: AIDS and hunger are directly interrelated." An expert on African issues, he recalled that it is women who have the main work responsibilities in agriculture, but "AIDS undermines the strength of African women, their skills and experience, and destroys the family ties that kept their families and communities afloat" (Africa Recovery, February, 2003).

By February 2003, famine caused by the deadly combination of drought and AIDS was threatening the lives of 38 million people. In a BBC interview reprinted in Africa Recovery (January, 2004), Kofi Annan called AIDS "a true weapon of mass destruction". It is significant that the geography of countries that are particularly threatened by drought almost coincides with the area of the greatest spread of this disease. The United Nations specialized organization UNAIDS estimates that in 2002 the percentage of adults infected with HIV in Malawi was 15%, in Swaziland and Lesotho-30%, and in Botswana-39%. More than 8 million people are waiting for additional food aid deliveries in these countries.

The magazine has long been sounding the alarm about the catastrophic spread of AIDS on the African continent. But recently, his publications have become particularly frequent, and their content is more dramatic. Thus, M. Fleishman's article " AIDS in Africa - gloomy forecasts "(Africa Recovery, September, 2002) reported that in the previous year, AIDS - related deaths increased by 2.2 million people in sub-Saharan Africa, and there were 3.5 million more people infected with HIV. Whereas previously AIDS was rampant mainly in Eastern and Southern Africa, it is now spreading rapidly in West and Central Africa, without encountering any serious opposition from local health systems.

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The author of the article gives the following figures: in Cameroon, among urban residents, the number of HIV - infected people in 1996 was 4.7%, in 2001 -11.8%. Neighboring Nigeria with 3.5 million The number of people living with HIV was second only to South Africa in terms of the number of people infected with AIDS. Statistics confirm that the first and most frequent victims of a terrible infection are women.

The disease has created a new divide in the world - between countries that are able to pay for the treatment of their patients, and countries that are most affected by the epidemic, but lack the necessary funds to fight it. New medicines, which do not cure the disease completely, but significantly prolong life, are terribly expensive, and pharmaceutical concerns, even after they have established mass production of the necessary medicines, refused to reduce their cost. The UN estimates that of the more than 4 million Africans in need of treatment, no more than 100,000 receive the necessary medication (Africa Recovery, April, 2004).

Public pressure and competition from pharmaceutical companies that have started producing the right drugs have led to a sharp decline in their cost. If the annual course of treatment previously cost the patient from 12 thousand to 15 thousand dollars, now it has been reduced in developing countries to 300 dollars for a one-year course. For countries where the majority of the population lives on less than $ 1 a day, treatment is still not available. In recent years, a pill was created that combined the three most effective antiretroviral drugs needed to slow down the course of the disease. In addition, the world is gradually developing a sense of solidarity with AIDS patients, and the flow of monetary donations from individuals, specialized international and national organizations, various corporations, as well as the volume of official loans is increasing.

The limited scope of the review did not allow me to focus on such extremely important and interesting issues covered by the magazine as: the struggle of women for their equality, the problems of youth and unemployment, the fate of rebel fighters who laid down their weapons, the solution of the agrarian problem, the implementation of privatization, industrial construction, etc. The magazine contains a lot of valuable information not only for Africanists. I would also like to note that each journal issue includes a list of recent scientific papers on Africa.

At the same time, one of the most pressing and complex contemporary problems of the continent - the problem of strengthening statehood - was overshadowed in the pages of the magazine by the question of democratization. But it is clear that democratization, for all its importance, is only part of the task. Its solution also needs ethnic pacification, profound social transformation, and, finally, the consolidation of African States ' efforts, possibly to the detriment of their own sovereignty. However, enlargement for the sake of enlargement hardly makes sense: Nigeria or the DRC are quite large, but helpless, constantly oscillating between anarchy and dictatorship, and are in a kind of impasse generated by internal impotence. We need new, bold, innovative solutions that would allow African countries to pool their efforts and resources on the basis of a kind of neo-Panafricanism.

In the meantime, as Africa Renewal magazine convincingly shows, the African continent is going through an extremely painful test path, littered with traps and dangers. But even in these difficult circumstances, its leaders remain cautiously optimistic, which, we hope, will help them choose both the right goals and the appropriate means to achieve them.

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