The African Union passport and dreams of democratic mobility
On mobility, democracy and making a decolonized future for Africa.
Politics
Gutting the public sector serves no one
Structural Adjustment Programs, implemented by the World Bank and IMF in developing countries, leave the administrative state especially unequipped to deal with climate change.
The meaning of party politics in Ghana’s urban neighborhoods
Why do so many of the urban poor support John Mahama and Ghana's opposition National Democratic Congress?
Laboratories for violence
Why a military-only approach against Boko Haram in the countries bordering Lake Chad will always fail: it doesn’t address the root causes of political conflict there.
Frontiers of dystopia
Cameroon claims to be a democracy. Then why are even moderates like Maurice Kamto in jail?
Israel and Palestine: The South African alternative
Combating Zionism requires a vision that pays no credence to ethno-nationalism. As the world reconsiders the one-state solution, South Africa should lead the way.
Rwanda has an opposition problem
If Rwandan support for the RPF and Kagame is so universal and genuine, why the murder, frequent arrest, torture and imprisonment of opposition politicians and investigative journalists?
The Limpopo School
The popular myth holds that most South African major resistance leaders come from its coastal regions. That's not been the case since the mid-1970s.
Sudan’s national salvation
Omar al Bashir has fallen in Khartoum. Beyond regime change—managed by the military—there's a deeper economic crisis.
What if postcolonial regimes use stories of your past to justify their rule?
The post-independence fates of Zimbabwean student activists who fought the Rhodesian regime.
The crimes of the Rwandan Patriotic Front
Judi Rever's account of the Rwandan genocide and its aftermath challenges the official narrative.
Lumumba Lives
Patrice Lumumba became a martyr of African independence. But what are Lumumba's "political afterlives" nearly sixty years later?
Algeria, Sudan, and the Arab Spring
The mass of people in North Africa are still a force to be reckoned with and the region is still far away from a return to authoritarian stagnation.
Cyclone Idai and climate justice
Beyond immediate disaster relief, sustainable global responses to climate change require greater and more predictable funding to strengthen the resilience of the planet's most vulnerable regions.
The political viability of anti-immigrationism
European nations increasingly look to the physical space of African nations for potential solutions to their racial and demographic anxieties.
A bloody scandal in Mali
Mali can't guarantee its citizens that it will protect them.
When teachers don’t get paid, we all lose
Teachers are undervalued around the world. The Lesotho teachers strike is yet another case to prove that point.
When is it antisemitic to criticize Israel?
The bases on which Israel's supporters believe it is subject to unfair criticism, are eerily similar to the rationalizations of apartheid South Africa's defenders in the 1970s and 80s.
‘Terrorism’ and antisemitism
A radical critique of the discourse on terrorism and, specifically, of repeated Israeli and US claims to moral superiority in the fight against “terrorism,” is long overdue.
The fragility of the Mozambican state
Cyclone Idai exposed a state weakened by an extractivist development model and captured by global capital, exposing ordinary Mozambicans.