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Africa

Mineral Beneficiation: A Pipedream of Prosperity in an Unequal Financial Architecture

September 8, 2026

Since 2023, 14 African countries have introduced export restrictions on unprocessed critical minerals, requiring “local beneficiation” – or in-country processing and manufacturing – prior to export, and demanding technology and financing. Wealthier countries are also supporting the idea of local beneficiation and stepping up investments in resource-rich countries, promising this will help to lift them […]

Africa

Papers, Please: Canon Collins 2026 Essay Shortlisted Finalist

September 5, 2026

This piece was a shortlisted finalist for the Canon Collins 2026 essay competition. The annual competition invites essays that demonstrate thought leadership and offer fresh perspectives on issues affecting southern Africa. Some of my earliest memories are not of places but of words. One of those words was kwerekwere. I heard it long before I […]

Africa

After the Ballot: What Democracy Must Mean for Somalia

September 3, 2026

Somali political life is intensely debated across towns, households, media platforms and diaspora communities. Yet this energy does not consistently produce the power to compel answers, reverse failed policies or remove officials whose conduct has become unacceptable. The distance between participation and political consequence remains one of Somalia’s central democratic problems. Direct local elections in […]

Africa

Why Lesotho’s remittance ‘safety net’ was never really its own, and why it is failing again in 2026

September 1, 2026

Lesotho is two years into a national state of disaster: US tariffs have gutted its garment factories, unemployment has passed 30%, and its main trade lifeline is guaranteed for less than a year. To understand how the mountain kingdom keeps ending up here, start almost forty years earlier.In 1987, something extraordinary happened in this small […]

Africa

Africa’s Assisted Reproductive Technology Boom Needs Public Governance, Not Just Private Investment

September 1, 2026

Across Africa, assisted reproductive technology (ART) is expanding at an unprecedented pace. Fertility clinics are opening in countries where, until recently, couples had little choice but to travel abroad, often to Europe, India, or within the continent South Africa—to access in vitro fertilisation (IVF) and related treatments. The costs of travel alone made this a […]

Africa

Wathint’ abafazi 70 years on

September 1, 2026

The year 2026 marks the 70th anniversary of the 1956 Women’s March against extending the dompas to the black women of South Africa. Every August, the commemoration of Women’s Month highlights the inheritances and unfinished legacies of women’s anti-apartheid resistance. This Women’s Month, it is timely to reflect on the legacies of women’s activism in […]

Africa

Hijra: Movement, Migration, and Islamic Thought

September 1, 2026

The question of why 70,000 Moroccans migrated to the Spanish-governed territories of Ceuta and Melilla within hours on 30 July – ‘Throne Day’, which is one of the most respectable celebrations of the Morocco Kingdom – still lingers in international media and haunts inquisitive minds. Commentators have talked extensively about the socio-economic and geopolitical incentives, […]

Africa

Who Speaks for Sudan’s Emergency Response Rooms?

August 31, 2026

When four members of Sudan’s Emergency Response Rooms travelled to London in March 2026 to accept the Chatham House Prize on behalf of the movement, the ceremony was widely celebrated as a moment of recognition for one of the most remarkable grassroots humanitarian responses in recent memory. Since fighting broke out between the Sudanese Armed […]

Africa

Beyond Projects: Rethinking Agricultural Investment for Sudan’s Post-War Recovery

August 31, 2026

This essay concludes a three-part series by the author on agriculture in Sudan. Read the previous instalments here and here. A different approach is needed to determine what to invest in, where to invest, who should benefit, how investments should be financed, and how they should adapt when conditions change. This distinction is important. The […]

Africa

No Place to Call Home: Increasing Homophobic & Transphobic Laws in the U.S. & Africa

August 31, 2026

A network of Christian evangelical organizations has spent nearly two decades and tens of millions of dollars fueling a storm of anti-LGBTI+ legislation across Africa. That same network now drafts and bankrolls a parallel wave of anti-LGBTI legislation including anti-trans bills sweeping through American statehouses. Meanwhile, new and expanding U.S. immigration laws increasingly restrict access to refuge for endangered migrants […]

Africa

Somalia Pushes Ahead with Controversial Regional Elections Despite Opponent Boycott.

August 28, 2026

Somalia’s transition to one-person,one-vote elections is increasingly becoming a struggle not only over democratic reform,but also over who controls political power. The Federal government has stepped into South-West and Galmudug not merely to maintain order or oversees voting,but,critics argue, to shape political outcomes. Across the states, opponents says Mogadishu is using electoral reform to strengthen […]

Africa

How Las Anod Changed Somaliland’s Case for Recognition

August 26, 2026

Somaliland has spent three decades asking the world to trust a specific story about itself: a peaceful, democratic state exercising real authority over the territory it claims, with institutions worthy of recognition. The 2023 war in Las Anod tested all four of those claims — peace, democratic legitimacy, authority over the territory, institutional credibility — […]

Africa

Violence, Profit, and the Economy Sustaining Eastern Congo’s Endless War

August 20, 2026

At a checkpoint between Miba and the Kachanga hill in Fizi territory, soldiers of the Congolese army wave through bicycles loaded with mineral ore, one at a time, charging fifty cents a crossing. At least four thousand bicycles pass daily, delivering at least two thousand dollars a day into the hands of men in uniform […]

Africa

Sudan: The Unfortunate Alliance

August 19, 2026

On Foreign Interest, the Ideal Militia, and What a Coloniser Prays He Leaves Behind My grandmother never said displacement. She said: we left the house and the water took it. But the water did not take it. The state took it. A state that had been making that decision for decades, in different languages, with […]

Africa

Africa’s Youth Employment Crisis Has a Curriculum Problem

August 18, 2026

When I worked for The Harvest Fund, I sat across from women-farmers who had just completed training in milling, business development, food safety. Competent women. Women who had shown up every day, taken notes, asked questions. And then, when we asked them what they wanted to do next what they wanted to build some of […]

Africa

Burhan’s Dialogue Is Not a Path to Stability

August 18, 2026

General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan has discovered dialogue again. After years of promises, a military coup, emergency rule, war rhetoric and political exclusion, Sudan’s army chief now says he wants a comprehensive dialogue inside the country to complete a civilian democratic transition. Al Jazeera reported proposals to drop death-penalty charges against opposition leaders and form a […]

Africa

The Coup Costs More Than the Corruption It Claims to Fix

August 17, 2026

Since 2020, soldiers have seized power in Mali, Guinea, Sudan, Burkina Faso (twice), Niger, and Gabon. In every case, the announcement has followed the same script: corruption has hollowed out the state, civilian government has forfeited its legitimacy, and the military is stepping in to restore what politicians destroyed. Crowds have gathered to celebrate in […]

Africa

Ethiopia Counts Coffee at the Wrong End

August 14, 2026

On July 7, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed told Parliament that Ethiopia had earned a record $3.1 billion from coffee exports. Six days later, the National Bank of Ethiopia reported that coffee export volume was down from the same period a year earlier. Both statements can be true. That is the problem. For a coffee-growing household […]

Africa

Malawi’s economic crisis: Can recovery begin?

August 14, 2026

Almost nine months after Malawian President Peter Mutharika returned to power, his administration finds itself grappling with a severe and protracted economic crisis. The government faces the urgent challenge of restoring foreign exchange reserves, managing a growing external debt burden, reducing inflation and addressing chronic food insecurity. When Malawi’s sixth president, Lazarus Chakwera, assumed office […]

Africa

Tanzania’s VAT Refund Revolution: The Quiet Reform That Could Unlock Billions in Private Investment

August 14, 2026

When governments unveil annual budgets, headlines focus on the big numbers: spending, growth and tax collection. But sometimes the real story sits quietly in the technical annexes. Tanzania’s 2026/27 budget, due to take effect from July, includes plans for 6.3%GDP growth and the biggest spending plan in the country’s history while narrowing the deficit. Yet […]

Africa

Walking with the Herd – Why Africa Must Rethink Its Oldest Economy

August 14, 2026

When pastoralists, researchers, policymakers and development practitioners gathered in Marsabit this year to mark the International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralists (IYRP-2026), the conversations went far beyond livestock, drought or humanitarian aid. Convened by the Centre for Research and Development in Drylands (CRDD), the dialogue challenged a deeply rooted assumption that has shaped development policy […]

Africa

The Beijing of It All: Africa’s Development Terms Are No Longer Written in Washington or Brussels

August 14, 2026

In the period that followed decolonisation, Africa’s development landscape continued to be shaped by Western partnerships. By the late 1990s and early 2000s, this Western-facing architecture took the form of policy conditionality, governance agendas and institutional reform attached to rotating credit agreements. This approach rested, at least in part, on a simple reality: countries in […]

Africa

Somalia: A Government With One Foot Out the Door

August 11, 2026

Somalia’s foreign passport crackdown reveals a governance crisis hiding in plain sight On the afternoon of June 24, 2026, Somalia’s Second Deputy Prime Minister, Jibril Abdirashid Haji, arrived at Nairobi’s Jomo Kenyatta International Airport aboard a flight from Mogadishu. Kenyan immigration officers stopped him at the gate. According to multiple reports, his Kenyan passport had […]

Africa

A Century of Agricultural Investment in Sudan: Why Has Development Failed?

August 11, 2026

This article is translated and adapted from an Arabic article published in Sudanese Online. The ideas reflect arguments presented by the author in his book on agriculture in Sudan. For decades, Sudan has been described as one of Africa’s countries with the greatest agricultural potential. Its vast arable land, diverse climatic zones, water resources, and […]

Africa

Present but Displaced: What Western Objections to Reparations Fail to See

August 9, 2026

On 25 March 2026, the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) adopted a Ghana-led resolution declaring the trafficking and racialised chattel enslavement of Africans the gravest crime against humanity. It passed by 123 votes to three, with 52 abstentions. Argentina, Israel and the United States voted against it, while the United Kingdom and European Union member […]

Africa

What young Kenyan men say when no one is watching

August 9, 2026

A young Kenyan man recently sent this anonymous message to a chatbot late at night: “Mbogi wanasema mimi si mwanaume nisipolala na huyo mama… tangu lini mtu ashajiita mwanaume kwa sababu ya kulala na wanawake?” (“My crew tells me I’m not a man if I don’t sleep with her. Since when did sleeping with women […]

Africa

Somalia: The Journalists Who Disappeared

August 6, 2026

In October 2022, Abdalle Ahmed Mumin — Secretary-General of the Somali Journalists Syndicate (SJS), the organisation that documents what happens to journalists in Somalia — arrived at Aden Adde International Airport in Mogadishu carrying a ticket to Nairobi. He was travelling to seek medical care for injuries he had sustained during a previous detention. He […]

Africa

Anatomy of a Failure: How Tunisia’s Democracy Was Undermined

August 6, 2026

Internal political betrayal, external cynicism, and the unravelling of the Arab Spring’s last laboratory. On 25 July 2026, thousands of Tunisians took to the streets of central Tunis, not to mark the 69th anniversary of the proclamation of the Republic, but to denounce the power grab carried out exactly five years earlier by President Kais […]

Africa

Renegotiating Military Immunity: Kenya’s New Terms for Foreign Troops

August 6, 2026

In July 2026, Britain suspended one of its flagship military exercises in Kenya after Nairobi withheld the licences required for troops to train in Laikipia. Five days later, the two governments reached an agreement allowing Exercise Haraka Storm to proceed. The immediate diplomatic crisis ended, but the deeper dispute did not; the standoff revealed that […]

Africa

Why Ethiopia’s Conflicts Keep Returning: The Question Ethiopia’s National Dialogue Cannot Avoid

August 6, 2026

As Ethiopia’s National Dialogue seeks to chart a path toward peace, it faces an immense task. The Dialogue aims to address some of the country’s most difficult political, historical, institutional, social, and peacebuilding questions. Yet its success may ultimately depend on confronting a more basic question: why do Ethiopia’s major conflicts keep returning? Ethiopia’s National […]

Africa

The Winter Circus: A Memoir

August 4, 2026

The Winter Circus: A Memoir (2026) by Leo Zeilig is published by the Uganda-based Editor House Facility (EHF). A genre-defying work blending memoir, fiction, and political reflection, it explores what it means to live through personal and global crisis. Moving between intimate experience and wider social forces, it captures a world of deep contradiction: extreme wealth […]

Africa

Two Presidents, No Government: Why Tigray’s War Is Coming Back

August 3, 2026

In Mekelle, the capital of Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region, two men call themselves president. One is Lieutenant General Tadesse Worede, appointed with Addis Ababa’s approval to run the region until elections could be held. The other is Debretsion Gebremichael, chairman of the party that governed Tigray for decades and led it through a war (2020-2022) […]

Africa

Whilst the World Debates Somaliland’s Recognition, Its Girls Remain Invisible

August 3, 2026

As international debate surrounding Somaliland’s recognition has returned to global headlines in recent months, questions of sovereignty and diplomacy have dominated the conversation. Reports of Israel’s recognition of Somaliland in December and Somaliland’s opening of an embassy in Jerusalem on 16 June have placed the territory’s political future firmly back in the international spotlight. Yet […]

Africa

Libya’s Elite Pact

August 3, 2026

In mid-June of 2026, the two rival factions claiming to be Libya’s official government agreed to a power sharing deal. In it, Prime Minister Abdul Dbeibah, the leader of the internationally recognised Government of National Unity (GNU) based in Triopli in western Libya, and Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar, the power behind of the unrecognised Government […]

Africa

How Russia Lost the Ability to Leave the Central African Republic

August 3, 2026

When armed groups attacked the border post of Am-Dafok in northeastern CAR on 30 June 2026, most analysts asked the familiar question: who was behind the attack, and how resilient is Russia’s presence? The right question is different. Why can Russia not simply leave the Central African Republic — even if it wanted to? The […]

Africa

When a Story of Homecoming Is Filmed in a Homeland Still Awaiting Return

August 3, 2026

I am from Dakhla, on the Atlantic coast of Western Sahara. For thirteen years, I have been unable to return safely because of my human-rights advocacy, my defence of the Sahrawi people’s right to benefit from the resources of their land and to express their views freely. Friends and fellow Sahrawi activists have been prosecuted […]

Africa

The Impact of the US-Iran War on Sudan

August 2, 2026

In February 2026, the US and Israel went to war against Iran. Since then, there have been multiple attempts at partial de-escalation through negotiations. However, the recent Memorandum of Understanding signed by the US in June in Versailles has fallen under strain in the past week, with the US seeking to enforce a new blockade […]

Africa

Portfolio Diplomacy: Rethinking African Economic Statecraft in a Multipolar World

July 29, 2026

Walk through Nairobi and the twenty-first century global economy comes into view. Chinese-built expressways carry commuters to office towers occupied by American technology firms. French retailer Carrefour has become one of the country’s largest supermarket chains. Japanese vehicles dominate the roads while Indian pharmaceutical companies supply hospitals and pharmacies. Increasingly, Gulf investors are financing the […]

Africa

Tigray’s Lost Classrooms: Why Education Must Be at the Centre of Recovery

July 25, 2026

The war in Tigray did not only destroy lives, homes, hospitals and livelihoods. It also attacked the foundations of the region’s future by depriving an entire generation of children of education. In January 2025, the European Commission’s Directorate-General for European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations reported that approximately 2.4 million school-aged children in Tigray […]

Africa

Sudan’s Peace Process Is Negotiating a War That No Longer Exists

July 21, 2026

More than three years into Sudan’s war, the battlefield has changed more than the peace process. The Sudanese Armed Forces, or SAF, recovered Khartoum and consolidated its hold over much of the north, east and centre. Fighting shifted towards Darfur, Kordofan and Blue Nile, while drone attacks reached areas once considered secure. Khartoum illustrates the […]

Africa

What Happens After Dandora? Kenya’s Green Transition Faces Its Hardest Test

July 21, 2026

For decades, thousands of Nairobi’s poorest residents have quietly carried out one of the city’s most important environmental services. Every day, informal waste pickers at Dandora sort, salvage and recover plastic, metal, paper, glass and electronic waste that would otherwise remain buried beneath one of Africa’s largest and oldest dumpsites. In doing so, they help […]

Africa

Will Abiy Ahmed be Ethiopia’s Bismarck or its Mandela?

July 18, 2026

Africa has long served as fertile ground for distinctive forms of leadership to emerge. Figures such as Nelson Mandela, Kwame Nkrumah, Haile Selassie, and Julius Nyerere, among others, represent the “Mount Rushmore” of African leadership, having left an enduring imprint on the continent’s history and beyond. Notably, some of these leaders’ political trajectories bear a […]

Africa

Ghana’s Reparations Moment Is the New Face of Pan-African Liberation

July 18, 2026

In Accra this June, the reparations debate moved from remembrance towards political architecture. Over three days, Ghana hosted the High-Level Consultative Conference on the “Next Steps” to the landmark United Nations resolution on the trafficking of enslaved Africans. The venues told their own story: technical deliberations at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, a high-level session […]

Africa

They Were Not Asking Us To Leave. They Were Telling Us.

July 18, 2026

At 1:12 AM, the morning of June 30, my sister sent a message to our family group chat: ‘Lock your doors and bedrooms as well.’ Then, thirty-three minutes later, she sent another one: ‘I’m too scared. I just want to be prepared.’ Another sister of mine replied: ‘You’ll be fine.’ And then, after a pause: […]

Africa

Sixty-Six Years On, the Promise of Somali Independence Remains Unfulfilled.

July 18, 2026

A Night of Hope. Aweys Addow, who was 19 years old when the flag was hoisted, was present to witness the event at Ficho Goberno, the former site of Mogadishu’s mayoral residence. At 12:00 hours (midnight) on 1 July 1960, Addow was among hundreds of jubilant Somalis who came out to celebrate the birth of […]

Africa

Ghana’s Northern Sovereignty Gap: JNIM and the Burkinabe Border

July 18, 2026

In May 2024, Ghana’s former Ambassador to Burkina Faso, Boniface Gambila, offered a candid description of what happens along Ghana’s 602-kilometer border with its northern neighbor: ‘Believe it or not, they are able to come into Ghana and go back. They move in and go back.’ He was talking about operatives of the Group for […]

Africa

The Ocean Is Not Fragmented. Power Is.

July 18, 2026

On 16-18 June in Mombasa, the Our Ocean Conference met on African soil for the first time, and over 100 governments, businesses and civil society organisations announced 320 new commitments valued at $6.4 billion to advance ocean conservation, sustainable fisheries, climate resilience and the blue economy. I have sat in enough such rooms to know the […]

Africa

West Africa Battles Escalating Drug Crisis as Cocaine Seizures Double, Synthetic Drugs Spread

July 2, 2026

Michael Olugbode in Abuja West Africa is confronting an increasingly sophisticated drug crisis, with cocaine seizures doubling, the proliferation of dangerous synthetic substances and pharmaceutical opioids, and growing social consequences prompting renewed calls for stronger regional cooperation, intelligence sharing and evidence-based interventions. The warning came as experts, government officials and representatives of Member States gathered […]

Africa

Sudan: UN, EU fear mass atrocities in El Obeid after El Fasher massacre

June 20, 2026

The United Nations Security Council is concerned about reports of military reinforcements by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) around El Obeid in Sudan, months after the massacre in El Fasher. The council, in a statement on Saturday, warned of the imminent risk of mass atrocities and demanded that the RSF immediately halt its assault on […]

Africa

Africa urgently needs more fish farms, says UN

June 16, 2026

Africa needs to urgently expand its fish-farming sector to meet its food needs, the head of the UN’s fisheries division said Tuesday, even as its latest report found record production levels globally. Fish and seafood is now a $184-billion trade, according to the State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture report by the United Nations’ Food […]

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