Politics

Nigerian farmers lack insurance: payouts triggered by weather data offer a solution

Ifedotun Aina, University of Cape Town and Opeyemi Ayinde, University of Ilorin - Agriculture is hugely important to Nigeria. It makes up about a quarter of the country’s economy, and almost half of...

Rating agencies and Africa: the absence of people on the ground contributes to bias against the continent – analyst

Misheck Mutize, University of Cape Town - Rating agency Fitch recently warned that the rapid spread of the mpox virus in sub-Saharan Africa could add to the fiscal pressures many countries in the...

Raila Odinga: the Kenyan statesman who championed competitive politics and accountability

John Mukum Mbaku, Weber State University - Raila Amolo Odinga, who died on 15 October 2025, aged 80, ran five times for the Kenyan presidency but didn’t win. Yet he became a statesman of enormous influence, whose political and humanitarian achievements surpassed those of many African heads of state. He will be remembered as one of the most important figures in the struggle for multiparty democracy. In this, he was like his father, Jaramogi Oginga Odinga – who was the country’s first post-independence vice-president. Oginga was a patriot, a nationalist, and one of a small number of Kenyans who were instrumental in the struggle against colonialism. In 1960, Oginga turned...

11 million Nigerian children are going hungry: how this hurts their health and what needs to be done

Blessing Akombi-Inyang, UNSW Sydney Unicef, the UN agency for children, reported in June 2024 that around 11 million Nigerian children were experiencing severe child food...

Kenya’s protests are different this time: 3 things that make it harder for government to crush them

Awino Okech, SOAS, University of London On 25 June 2024, a youth-led protest primarily composed of Gen Zs, as they are popularly referred to, stormed Kenya’s parliament. Legislators voted to pass the Finance Bill 2024 in its third and last...

Togo’s citizens want to leave Ecowas – new survey suggests why

Koffi Améssou Adaba, Université de Lomé - A survey of Togolese citizens recently looked into perceptions of their government’s handling of the terrorist threat in the northern region and of the Alliance of Sahel States – Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger. The survey was carried out by Afrobarometer, an independent, pan-African research network, in partnership with the Center for Research and Opinion Polls. The Savanes...

South African troops are dying in the DRC: why they’re there and what’s going wrong

Lindy Heinecken, Stellenbosch University - The death of South African soldiers on a Southern African Development Community (SADC) mission in the Democratic Republic of...

Edson Sithole: new book uncovers the work of a thinker, lawyer and Zimbabwean freedom fighter who ‘disappeared’

Brooks Marmon, University of Pretoria - Edson Sithole was born in what was then Southern Rhodesia in 1935. He was the first black person in southern Africa to obtain a Doctor of Laws degree. He was the second black person in the country (which became Zimbabwe in 1980) to qualify as a lawyer, and co-founded Rhodesia’s African Bar Association in 1973. Sithole was an anti-colonial nationalist. He was “disappeared” alongside his secretary, Miriam Mhlanga, in downtown Salisbury (present-day Harare) 50 years ago. Brooks Marmon, a historian of Zimbabwe’s liberation struggle, has compiled and edited a forthcoming collection of Sithole’s writings,...

Nigerian farmers lack insurance: payouts triggered by weather data offer a solution

Ifedotun Aina, University of Cape Town and Opeyemi Ayinde, University of Ilorin - Agriculture is hugely important to Nigeria. It makes up about a...

Tanzania’s green gold rush: how avocado waste is hurting farmers and what should be done

Jonas Cromwell, University of Leeds - Avocados have been grown in Tanzania since the early 1890s. The global appetite for the creamy fruit, also known as green gold, is booming. The industry’s market...

Sudan’s rebel force has declared a parallel government: what this means for the war

Samir Ramzy, Helwan University - Sudan’s south-western city of Nyala in Darfur recently became the centre of a significant...

Burundi’s Path to Stability: Political Shifts and Emerging Social Progress

In the hills of East Africa, where mist lingers over terraced fields at dawn, Burundi is quietly reshaping its political and social landscape. The country, long marked by the scars of ethnic conflict...

The Political Crossroads of Algeria

By Sally Barenger On a spring day in 2019, the avenues of Algiers filled with chants and flags. The air carried a mixture of defiance and cautious hope as tens of thousands marched past...

Climate change has deep historical roots – Amitav Ghosh explores how capitalism and colonialism fit in

Julia Taylor, University of the Witwatersrand and Imraan Valodia, University of the Witwatersrand Amitav Ghosh is an internationally celebrated author of 20 historical fiction and non-fiction books. The Indian thinker and writer has written...