Drought, famine, refugees, piracy, and the violence and terrorism endemic to the shattered city of Mogadishu, a capital ruined by civil war: these are the images that flash through peoples’ minds nowadays when they think of the Horn of Africa. Such perceptions, however, are not only tragically one-sided; they are short-sighted and dangerous.

Behind the stock images of a region trapped in chaos and despair, economies are growing, reform is increasingly embraced, and governance is improving. Moreover, with Yemen’s government imploding across the Red Sea, the Horn of Africa’s strategic significance for maritime oil transport has become a primary global security concern. In short, the Horn of Africa is too important to ignore or to misunderstand.

My blood runs cold every time I hear that another teen has gone missing. I’m sure many Jamaicans feel the same way too. It’s time for the abductions taking place in Jamaica to come to an abrupt end. It is possible.  There are enough people, power and resources to make this a realty.  The Ananda Alert Programme and other programmes are doing the best they can to resolve the issue and I commend the efforts of their members. However, I’m still not satisfied as teens are still going missing every other day on average. I know I’m not standing alone as countless Jamaican citizens will say and are saying the same thing.

Nigerians like political theater, particularly if it is loud, colorful, and has a rich cast of “good” and “bad” characters. Such melodrama abounded from November 2009, when ailing President Umaru Yar’Adua was flown out of the country for treatment, until the just-concluded general elections, Nigeria’s fourth since military rule ended in 1999. According to the official results, Goodluck Jonathan, who succeeded Yar’Adua upon his death and became the ruling People’s Democratic Party (PDP) candidate, was sworn in as President on May 29.

Jonathan was the unlikeliest of candidates in Nigeria’s take-no-prisoners presidential power game. He is an Ijaw, an ethnic minority in the South-South, one of Nigeria’s six political regions, whereas the country’s governance had historically been dominated by the three largest ethnic groups – the Hausa-Fulani, found mainly in the North-West and North-East, the Igbo in the South-East, and the Yoruba in the South-West. Complex ethnic bargaining had made Jonathan Yar’Adua’s running mate in the fraudulent 2007 election.

“He lived a hero, he died a martyr...if they killed one Osama, a thousand others will be born,” says a comment on a Facebook group called “We are all Osama bin Laden.” The group was formed one hour after US President Barack Obama’s announcement of the Al Qaeda leader’s death. That Facebook group already has around 30,000 “likes.” Moreover, there are more than 50 similar groups on Facebook.

Reaction to Bin Laden’s death on Al Jazeera and other Arabic news outlets has been mixed. Some view the man considered a mass murderer in the West as an icon, and his death and burial at sea at the hands of American forces will not undermine that perception in the eyes of his sympathizers. Indeed, Egypt’s former Mufti, Sheikh Nasr Farid Wasil, has already declared Bin Laden a martyr, “because he was killed by the hands of the enemy.” (Sheikh Wasil, it should be made known, has no links or known sympathies for Al Qaeda and he represents a very different Islamic school of thought.)