Editor's Note: Christopher Alessi is an associate staff writer at the Council on Foreign Relations. Jendayi Frazer is an Adjunct Senior Fellow for Africa Studies at CFR.  The following interview is reprinted from CFR.org with permission .

By Christopher Alessi and Jendayi Frazer, CFR.org

Tensions along the oil-rich border that divides Sudan and recently independent South Sudan have escalated in recent weeks, raising the prospect of a full-scale war between the longtime foes. China, which maintains considerable oil interests in both countries, has called for restraint (Reuters) and vowed to work with the United States to bring both sides back to the negotiating table.Jendayi Frazer, the former U.S. assistant secretary of state for African affairs, says while the role of mediation should remain with the African Union, the United States and China are vital players in this conflict that can bring pressure to bear on both parties.

However, Frazer says it is "a strategic mistake and it has never worked" for the international community to treat both sides equally, since the northern Sudan is clearly the aggressor in this latest conflict as well as many of those in the past. "The international community should be united against northern aggression," she says. FULL POST

Editor’s Note: John Prendergast, co-founder of the Enough Project, is currently in residence at the Joan B. Kroc School of Peace Studies at the University of San Diego.

By John Prendergast – Special to CNN

It’s a long way from watching and sharing a video to actually catching a war criminal and ending a war.  But if the records that have been broken for videos watched and children abducted are to mean anything, then that gap must be bridged.  After an unprecedented push to pluck him from anonymity, can Joseph Kony - newly infamous leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), whose ranks over the last 25 years have been filled with child soldiers - be brought to justice in 2012?

Since 2008, Kony’s LRA has abducted 3,400 civilians.  For those operating under the premise that the LRA is in decline, consider this: in 2011 alone, there were nearly 300 reported LRA attacks in three central African countries, more than five per week, during which nearly 600 civilians were abducted.  In recent months, attacks are on the rise in Congo and the Central African Republic (CAR).  The LRA has carved out a safe haven in a national park in Congo, and other safe havens are being developed in CAR and, reportedly, Darfur.

Repeated peace initiatives have been spurned by Kony.  He will be stopped primarily by a focused, competent African-led military effort backed by an equally robust defection and demobilization program for LRA combatants. FULL POST

Editor's Note: The following is reprinted with the permission of the Council on Foreign Relations.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon condemned Sudanese air raids on South Sudan and called on the neighboring countries to engage in dialogue, amid an escalating conflict over the countries' shared oil-rich border area (al-Jazeera). However, Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir rejected negotiations with the South yesterday, saying "our talks with them were with guns and bullets." Meanwhile, on a visit to China, South Sudanese President Salva Kiir told Chinese President Hu Jintao that Sudan had declared war on South Sudan. China, an ally with significant interests in both Sudans, called on the two sides to exercise "calm and restraint" (Reuters). FULL POST

Editor's Note: Richard Aidoo is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Politics and Geography, Coastal Carolina University.

By Richard Aidoo, The Diplomat

The rhetoric surrounding Africa, or at least the continent’s economic development, appears to be changing.

Despite the ongoing global economic turmoil, a number of African nations have been making impressive strides in their development, a point underscored by The Economist’s decision recently to run a leader describing Africa as the “hopeful continent,” drawing a clear contrast to its cover story “The Hopeless Continent” a decade ago.

And the continent’s leaders are now looking east for their inspiration. Rwandan President Paul Kagame, for example, has said he hopes to eventually transform his country’s economy into the “Singapore of Central Africa.” Such sentiments tap into the vast and growing repository of Afro-optimism, an optimism that sees sustained economic growth as the future, even as the north of the continent is embroiled in domestic political turmoil and uprisings.

So, is it Africa’s time to replicate the economic growth feats of Asia? This may seem like a herculean task, but given the recent economic gains made in countries like Ghana, which posted 13.5 percent growth last year as it casts off the failed economic policies of the 1980s and 1990s, as well as the success of recent BRICS addition South Africa, there’s now hope for an “African miracle.” FULL POST

Editor’s note: Jolyon Ford PhD is senior Africa analyst at the consultancy Oxford Analytica, and a senior consultant to the Institute for Security Studies, South Africa.

By Jolyon Ford - Special to CNN

This month marks the anniversaries of the first free general elections in South Africa (April 27, 1994) and independence from white minority rule in neighboring Zimbabwe (April 18, 1980). In coming months, the sun could set in each country on the lives of two major African leaders whom history will remember very differently.

Nelson Mandela is 93 years old. The anti-apartheid icon retired over a decade ago after serving as post-apartheid South Africa’s first democratically-elected president. The contribution his leadership and example have made to that country’s longer-term prospects for racial harmony and social cohesion is generally seen as incalculable. The anxiety following his brief hospitalization in February signalled the levels of respect and affection in which he is held in South Africa and around the world: his death and funeral will undoubtedly be significant global events.

Zimbabwe’s current president Robert Mugabe has been in office, in effect, since 1980. Last week he walked unaided off a flight from Singapore. Reactions to reports in early April that the 88-year old was dying in a foreign hospital provide further proof - if more were needed - of the considerable political uncertainty prevailing in contemporary Zimbabwe. FULL POST

By Fareed Zakaria, CNN

Six weeks ago, very few people outside of Africa had any idea who Joseph Kony was. Today at least 87 million people do. That's how many people have watched the viral vide on YouTube about this brutal Ugandan warlord.

My guest this past weekend was Jeffrey Gettleman.  Gettleman has known about Kony for years. In fact, he was embedded with the Ugandan Army on a hunt for Kony two years ago. Gettleman is the East Africa Bureau Chief of the New York Times and was was just awarded the Pulitzer Prize for international reporting. We chatted about Kony, "dirty wars" in Africa and Africa's prospects in general. Here's a transcript of our discussion:

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Editor's Note: Roopa Gogineni is a freelance journalist and photographer. 

By Roopa Gogineni – Special to CNN

Four years ago while studying in Tunis, I was told not to talk politics in the streets. But one afternoon, sitting on steps in an empty suburb, a prophetic Tunisian friend opened up about her government and president.  She had a lot to say.

Recently in Bujumbura, the lakeside capital of Burundi, I had a similar conversation with a security guard who would not share his name. He led me into a deserted alley and declared, “The government will have problems in the future, if things continue like this, there will be many in the streets.”

A small Great Lakes country of eight million people, Burundi is almost always overshadowed by its neighbor to the north, Rwanda. Both countries emerged from catastrophic civil wars, but Rwanda has taken off under the charismatic leadership of Paul Kagame while Burundi remains one of the poorest countries in Africa. FULL POST

Editor's Note: Dr. James M. Lindsay is a Senior Vice President at the Council on Foreign Relations and co-author of America Unbound: The Bush Revolution in Foreign Policy. Visit his blog here and follow him on Twitter.

By James M. Lindsay, CFR.org

Tuareg rebel fighters in northern Mali declared on Friday the independent country of Azawad. The announcement comes on the heels of the rebels’ rapid success in driving government forces out of Northern Mali in the two weeks since Malian soldiers overthrew the country’s democratically elected president, Amadou Touré, a former general who first came to power in a coup two decades ago. (Touré oversaw Mali’s transition to democracy and then stepped down from power, earning him the nickname “the soldier of democracy.” He was elected president in 2002 and again in 2007.)

The new ruling junta justified its coup on the grounds that Touré had failed to put down the Tuareg rebellion. Tuaregs, a semi-nomadic people spread across Niger, Mali, Libya, Algeria, and Burkina Faso, make up an estimated 10 percent of Mali’s population. They have been fighting for their independence since even before Mali won its own independence from France in 1960. FULL POST

Editor's Note: Jennifer G. Cooke is director of the Africa Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C.

By Jennifer G. Cooke, CSIS

Disgruntled junior army officers have seized control of the presidential palace and state broadcasting apparatus in the West African country of Mali, declaring a coup d’état against the government of President Amadou Toumani Touré. Calling themselves the National Committee for the Return of Democracy and the Restoration of the State (CNRDR), the soldiers have denounced the government’s incompetence, most notably its failure to respond effectively to an ongoing insurrection led by Tuareg rebels in the country’s north. The coup leaders have announced the suspension of the constitution, the closure of the country’s borders, and the imposition of a nationwide curfew. President Touré has reportedly taken refuge in an army barracks in Bamako, protected by loyalist presidential guards.

The coup, if it is ultimately successful, will be a major setback to Mali’s political development and a blow to the country’s hard-won reputation as a strong West African democracy. The country has earned widespread praise for the consolidation of democratic institutions, economic reform, and free and fair elections over the last 20 years, this despite being one of the world’s poorest and least economically developed countries. FULL POST

George Clooney was arrested this morning for protesting about the situation in South Sudan. I interviewed him earlier this week.  My interview will air in full this Sunday at 10a and 1p Eastern on CNN, but here's an excerpt from Clooney on why the crisis in Sudan affects your wallet:

"China has a $20 billion oil infrastructure in the Sudan. They get 6% of their oil imported from the Sudan. And the South Sudan has the oil and North Sudan has the refineries, and North Sudan was taking that money from the oil and not giving it back and buying weapons to hurt the South. So about six weeks ago, the South said, 'OK, we're done.' And they shut off the oil.

So China suddenly is getting no return on their money. That gives us a unique position, as opposed to looking to them as humanitarians or to do the right thing, we can meet with China - not we, but a high-level government official - could meet with China and say 'Let's work on this together, because we both, economically, would benefit by a resolution, a cross-border resolution.'"

"Right now, our gas prices go up as the president said in his press conference because when the Chinese aren't getting their 6% from the Sudan, they're getting it from somewhere else and that raises the price for all of us. So it's something that's mutually beneficial."

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