Where to next?

The cry for democracy and the people’s revolution that started in Tunisia and later toppled President Zine al Abidine Ben Ali and is now set to do the same to Egypt’s longest serving leader Hosni Mubarak some say is just the tip of the iceberg!

However, the international and western media seem solely focused on how these two events will affect neighbouring Arab countries and although their significance on the African nations should be equally looked at there is little covering and hardly any debating of it.

Under Ben Ali, Tunisia had achieved high economic growth, and huge investments in education, heath provision, urbanisation and modernisation. And although by international standards these achievements might not be grand – in the scheme of things they are quite considerable!

Which makes you wonder, if Tunisians rose and protested to over throw their government, then what will become of other African nations that have been under autocratic rule, with far less development and hardly any investments while enduring all kinds of oppressions for decades!?

Could this cry and what started in Tunisia, move south to the heart of the continent or make its way east to the Arabian Peninsula?