Fear and solidarity
Surviving the COVID-19 crisis as a jobless Sierra Leonean domestic worker in Lebanon. They are stuck together after losing their jobs or fleeing abusive employers.
Politics
Migration and Africa’s eternal lockdown
The unprecedented distress of momentarily locked-down lives should prompt Europeans to realize how much their leadership curtails freedom of movement on a permanent basis on the African continent.
The peace theater
Efforts to introduce 'peacebuilding' as panacea to current trends in US military spending do little to shift the imperialist status quo.
COVID-19 deepens division in the Comoros Islands
The arrival of coronavirus in the Comoros Islands has seen a disruption of informal migration routes and the unequal power relationship between the archipelago's islands.
The time to act is now
More than 90 African intellectuals wrote an open letter to African leaders about the continent’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Vagabond reflections on the ‘Year of Africa’
Revisiting the clash of the American-born UN diplomat Ralph Bunche and Patrice Lumumba in 1960 over the terms and timeliness of African colonies' independence from their European masters.
Unpacking South Africa’s COVID-19 “rescue package”
South Africa's R50bn ($26bn) rescue package is 10% of its GDP. It is a major step forward, but some warning lights are flashing.
Solidarity under quarantine
Nelson Mandela's life teaches us that being quarantined is not the end of politics, but for the regeneration of politics.
A democracy of chameleons
Malawi is experiencing a crisis over the legitimacy of the democratic state itself.
Out of sight
In South Africa, social distancing to bring down COVID-19 infections takes a decidedly local shape. In a racialized society, it manifests primarily as white melancholia and black Afro-pessimism.
Locating African agency in Africa-China relations
Relationships between African countries and China are more complex than they appear in the media and academia.
People Power in the age of COVID-19
Will the coronavirus pandemic extend Museveni’s authoritarianism or the lockdown instead provide openings for Uganda’s opposition?
The contested narratives of a dead man’s legacy
Kenyans are split about the legacy of president Daniel Arap Moi, who served from 1978 to 2002 and died on 4 February 2020: Vile and reprehensible vs a benign Baba, history suggests the latter.
To remember selectively
How partisanship distorts the construction and narration of public memory about historical events, especially the resistance against apartheid.
South Africa’s one-sided lockdown: coercing the poor, coddling the rich?
The Ramaphosa Presidency has been praised for its handling of the coronavirus pandemic, but the compensating measures that accompany it are inadequate to protect much of the population.
Will COVID-19 keep out of Africa?
While COVID-19 hasn't yet hit African cities as hard as those in the global North, it will eventually likely penetrate deep into the countryside where the most vulnerable live and where health facilities are rudimentary.
I mourn in deafening silence
Are the international community and the African Union really powerless to stop the fratricidal war in Cameroon, or are they just indifferent?
Destroying public trust during a pandemic
Few things are going on as normal during the COVID-19 pandemic. Unfortunately, political dysfunction in Lesotho continues, with negative ramifications for Basotho.
Collective action, “liberation,” and Tanzania’s working poor
How can a fragmented and precarious working class unite against exploitative labor relations and, in the process, transform them?
Praying through the pandemic
Pentecostalism in Nigeria preaches that prayer, not political action, is the solution to COVID-19.