Africa’s future: A recent lecture on a troubled continent’s enduring promise
‘After Years of Struggle, South Sudan Becomes a New Nation’, proclaimed a July 9, 2011 headline in The New York Times. Few headlines make such a claim nowadays. After all, the celebration of new nation is rare indeed. Yet little good news has followed. On assignment to mark the occasion, Alex Perry, a reporter with TIME Magazine found a country of discord not development. He titled his feature: ‘Born in Blood’. This month, five years after the shouts of “Freedom” from the Southern Sudanese, and discussing a young country still marred by genocide, corruption and a stubborn civil conflict, he opted for concision over candor: South Sudan is a ‘horrible disaster’, he wrote. Addressing a crowded lecture hall at the Oxford Martin School, Mr. Perry —whose award-winning …