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The vulnerability of Africa to the impact of climate change, which results in natural disasters and environmental degradation, accelerates hardship and poverty for millions of Africans. However, Africa still lacks the necessary scientific and technical capacity to assess fully and to monitor the possible future impacts of climate change. One of the instruments available to address the challenges of environmental monitoring (including climate change)and to provide early warnings of natural and human-made disasters for Africa's development is Earth observation satellites. Earth observation satellites record Earth's information from space and provide accurate, continuous, simultaneous measurements of our planet. The results of the application of Earth observation satellites have long term social benefits which include the early detection of hurricanes and typhoons that can lead to prompt warnings for areas predicted to be affected, thus providing crucial time to implement safety measures to mitigate the effects of such disasters. Several authors concur with this position, stating that the global view from satellite observation is unmatched in its ability to capture the dynamics and variability of Earth processes. The capability to predict weather (among other things) has led Earth observation satellites to become essential to everyday applications that improve human safety and quality of life. However, despite the many benefits of the use of Earth observation satellites, it still remains a major challenge for Africa to explore the full potential of Earth observation satellites in addressing continental needs (Figure 1). This commentary assesses the status of Africa in regard to Earth observation satellites.

The African Union's Africa: New Pan-African Initiatives in Global Governanceexamines the initiatives of the Pan-African global governance institution the African Union (AU) as the organization and its precursor commemorate their Jubilee as international actors. Taking a unique approach, the book seeks to explain the AU through a theoretical framework referred to as \"the African Union phenomenon,\" capturing the international organization's efforts to transform the national politics of Africa as well as to globalize the practice of African politics. The authors examine Africa's self-determined international norms and values such as Pan-Africanism, African Solutions to African Problems, Hybrid Democracy, Pax Africana, and the African Economic Community to demonstrate that Africa-the world's least developed region-is composed of crucial values, institutions, agents, actors, and forces that are, through the AU, contributing to the advancement of contemporary global development. The book reveals how in the areas of cultural identity, democracy, security, and economic development Africans are infusing new politics, economics, and cultures into globalization representing the collective will and imprint of African agency, decisions, ideas, identities, practices, and contexts. Via a Pan-African vision, the AU is having both regional and global impact, generating exciting possibilities and complicated challenges.

African economic integration and peacekeeping constitute respectively the largest institutionalization, and the largest operationalization, of the African Union (AU) and its sub-regional organisations. The number of African soldiers and police in AU and United Nations (UN) peacekeeping operations has grown steadily. Sometimes, major strategic decisions have been mistakes which aggravated, or even catalysed conflicts that would not otherwise have occurred. The peacekeeping missions in Nigeria and Somalia are examples of these. Peacekeeping operations are in the larger scheme of things part of the on-going project of African integration. This paper identifies major problems that remain persistent after half a century of protracted Pan-Africanist endeavours at sub-regional and continental integration. One recurrent occurrence is the chasm between aspirational treaties voluntarily signed, and their implementation, taking at best a decade or decades. Often, entities founded on paper remain dormant, until in a subsequent decade another structure is founded to operationalize the function of the previous paper entity, with this process going through several iterations.

The proposal to build the world's largest hydro-power project on the Congo River is a century old. This article argues that the Grand Inga project could become the political, diplomatic, and economic driver to deepening integration between the Democratic Republic of the Congo and other African countries. The Inga delays were not without benefits. Twenty-first century sensibilities ensure revision of the proposed mega-project to minimize both ecological and social harm. While colonial-era projects were configured to maximize benefits to imperialist, settler, and corporate interests, independence and democratization are the prerequisites to facilitate the broadest possible distribution of the benefits of electrification. Since some of the countries involved have hybrid regimes, further democratization, and civil society lobbying, will be necessary to mitigate the downside of its ecological and social impacts.

These essays give a multidimensional perspective on South Africa's democracy as it turns twenty, and will be of interest to general readers while being particularly useful to students and researchers.

After seven decades of episodic existence through conferences, the Pan-African project became permanently institutionalised with the founding of the Organisation of African Unity in 1963, with a qualitative upgrade into the African Union in 2002. Much academic literature on African integration and the OAU-AU is pessimistic. Most media commentary is dismissive of the AU, and derogatory of the Pan-African Parliament. This article seeks to trace the on-going evolution of the OAU-AU, and enquire how the AU stands up to contemporary regional organisations. This makes it focus on operationalised ground truth, rather than entities which exist mostly on paper. The African Union and its regional communities have achieved significantly more - and attempted vastly more - than a score of contemporaries such as the Organisation of American States, the League of Arab States, the Association of South-East Asian Nations, and the Southern Common Market. Among regional communities, the African Union is arguably second in accomplishments to only the European Union, which has a three orders of magnitude larger budget and personnel establishment. The African Union's operations focus on peace-making, while its institution-building focuses on economic integration and development.

The African Union’s Africa: New Pan-African Initiatives in Global Governance examines the initiatives of the Pan-African global governance institution the African Union (AU) as the organization and its precursor commemorate their Jubilee as international actors. Taking a unique approach, the book seeks to explain the AU through a theoretical framework referred to as “the African Union phenomenon,” capturing the international organization’s efforts to transform the national politics of Africa as well as to globalize the practice of African politics. The authors examine Africa’s self-determined international norms and values such as Pan-Africanism, African Solutions to African Problems, Hybrid Democracy, Pax Africana, and the African Economic Community to demonstrate that Africa—the world’s least developed region—is composed of crucial values, institutions, agents, actors, and forces that are, through the AU, contributing to the advancement of contemporary global development. The book reveals how in the areas of cultural identity, democracy, security, and economic development Africans are infusing new politics, economics, and cultures into globalization representing the collective will and imprint of African agency, decisions, ideas, identities, practices, and contexts. Via a Pan-African vision, the AU is having both regional and global impact, generating exciting possibilities and complicated challenges.