Wole Akande

The failure of the latest round of negotiations to reach an international agreement to allow poor countries to buy cheap drugs, guarantees that 2003 will be another miserable year for millions of HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis patients in poor countries.

The commercialisation of culture has a disturbing impact on people. Its cumulative effect in Africa is a crisis of cultural confidence, combined with the increased economic uncertainty and crime which global integration often brings.