The unforeseen threat
Many of Nairobi's apocalypse merchants and prophesy peddlers have disappeared in the past year. Reflections on how COVID-19 has re-shaped the city and residents' lives.
Politics
Essentialism and the making of African refugees
African “refugeeness” in the media, policy, and academia is an essentialist physical image conflating material deprivation and multiple victimhoods.
Food and the struggle for Africa’s sovereignty
How early post-independence clarity on the link between food self-sufficiency and national sovereignty offers lessons for contemporary efforts.
The reluctant scientist
The late Tanzanian president, John Pombe Magufuli, was initially lauded for his no-nonsense approach to corruption. But the cracks began to appear within months of his presidency.
Border wars
The Joint Boundary Commission that Lesotho and South Africa have revived, gives hope that some sort of border deal might be possible between the two countries.
Why the tree is producing bad apples
Corruption is South Africa’s pandemic—one that has been disenfranchising and killing people long before our transition to democracy.
Lay him down on a high mountain
What is the South African political leader Robert Sobukwe’s legacy today?
Don’t cede the streets
#FeesMustFall was the most serious challenge to the post-apartheid political order, but didn’t connect to broader working-class struggles. Now, despite police brutality, students are beginning to make those linkages.
The pathology of economics
COVID-19 exposes the deadly dominance of neoclassical economics in Africa.
The imagined immorality of refuge
Behind the anxieties about tackling forced displacement and terror, is the recognizable lexicon of racialized difference. This all infuses the practice of humanitarianism.
Economic crime in the Niger Delta
Shell and its counterparts in the oil industry in Nigeria must accept responsibility for horrors that result from their quests for profit. Everything else is just PR.
Capital in flight
Social policy is essential to creating more just African countries. Why is it not the norm across the continent?
Death by betrayal
Tanzania’s workers are at the highest risk for COVID-19 infections and deaths. Why are trade unions not taking action?
If we lie down, we are dead
Student militancy has revived in Burkinabè public universities over the past decade. Now, a student movement could slowly transform society.
People are the state
What would happen if people could transform state policy based on the principle of social justice? The AIDS struggle in South Africa has some lessons.
Take the soul from everyone, and the liberty of all
The treatment of victims of rape and sexual violence in Senegal, a country in which the bodies of women have always been an arena for political battles.
Bill Gates and his technofix dream for the planet
Philanthrocapitalists are driving massively profitable schemes dressed up as eco-friendly, pro-poor solutions to climate disaster.
Beware of martyrs
The Senegalese state’s quest to crush the opposition has caused massive unrest throughout the country. A regime that blows on the embers fans the flames.
