Alex Perry

Alex Perry is an author and TIME contributor who has covered Africa, Asia and the Middle East. His latest book, The Rift: the Future of Africa, will be published in late 2014.

Articles from Contributor

Will We Really Let 750,000 People Starve to Death?

Are we really about to let three-quarters of a million people starve to death? The U.N. thinks we might. Figures describing the famine in Somalia from the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) paint a consistent, horrifying picture. As of late September, hunger is besieging 12.4 million East Africans, with …

Old Man vs Rude Kid: South Africa’s (Poor) Substitute Democracy

If ever proof was needed that competition – and its political manifestation, democracy – is as humanly innate as Darwin claimed, it is in the constant, sometimes violent challenges that confront one-party states. The Arab world is experiencing the ultimate expression of the universal opposition to a life without choice and the desire …

South Sudan? Where? Don’t ask Google Maps.

An excellent guest blog on how technology can struggle to keep up with giant human events, from TIME’s East Africa correspondent and Sudan specialist, Alan Boswell.

If a new country is born, and no one sees it online, does it really exist? More than a month after South Sudan’s independence, the new African nation is still not on …

Somalia: A Very Man-Made Disaster

The difference between a drought and a famine is down to man. Texas is in the middle of its worst drought on record right now but cowboys aren’t starving – because Texas, and the US, have government and economy enough to ensure they don’t. Somalia doesn’t have any government worthy of the name and that’s one reason why persistent …

Somalia: Deadly, Even For al Qaeda

The reported death of the mastermind of the 1998 US embassy bombings in Kenya and Nigeria Tanzania finally brings to a close the opening chapter of what went on to become the war on terror. Photographs and DNA analysis on the bodies of two men shot and killed at a Transitional Federal Government (TFG) roadblock in Mogadishu overnight on …

Mugabe’s Latest Gift to Zimbabwe: the Secret of Living Longer

Good news from Zimbabwe where, despite Western media reports of political crisis, economic stagnation and widespread poverty, the electoral roll indicates the country is actually one of the healthiest on earth. The October 2010 count finds 41,100 voters in Zimbabwe aged 100 or more – four times the number of centenarians in Britain, …

Conflict over Abyei: Why Sudan Stands “Close to the Precipice of War”

In the last year, to visit Sudan has been to undertake an exercise in schizophrenia. In the run-up to a referendum in January on whether to split Africa’s largest country in two, the mostly Christian south was – against all odds – about to pull off a peaceful and credible referendum on independence, despite medieval poverty and barely …

South Africa: A Loss for the ANC, a Win for Democracy

Early results in South Africa’s local elections suggest gains for the opposition, indicating a gradual but profound shift of power in Africa’s economic and political powerhouse. The ruling African National Congress (ANC), the party that defeated apartheid in 1990 under Nelson Mandela, will remain the ruling force in South Africa. But a …

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