< 1 min read. How does our culture shape our worldview in this day and age? Zein Abubakar, a former commissioner with the defunct Constitution of Kenya Review Commission (CKRC) and a member of the East African Legislative Assembly (EALA) recently explored the question at a lecture in Nairobi. This video is the result of a collaboration between The Elephant and Africa Uncensored.
< 1 min read. Footage of Mwalimu Nyerere being received by US President, John F. Kennedy on his visit to the White House on 15 July 1963.
< 1 min read. Is Pan-Africanism today any different from the brand of Pan-Africanism that we know Marcus Garvey and other black activists of their day for? What is the place of young people in today's Pan-African movement? Pan-Africanist Brian Tamuka Kagoro recently tackled the subject in a lecture on #21CenturyPanAfricanism in Nairobi.
< 1 min read. Mwalimu Nyerere speaking to journalists at his residence on 13th December 1991.
9 min read. At no point in its history did Africa have a more educated youth population than today. But at no point in its history did so many young people compete for so few formal jobs. Some seek greener pastures in Europe; others build a future at home. ANJA BENGELSTORFF talked to young people in South Africa, Ghana and Uganda who create opportunities for themselves – and to the benefit of others. Their lesson: Think outside the box.
8 min read. Trump's new Africa strategy seems more to be concerned with checking China's growing influence in Africa. By ALY VERJEE
10 min read. In this final part of a three-part series, KALUNDI SERUMAGA examines how the old imperial powers and a new entrant, China are gearing up for a second scramble and partition of Africa and what Africa can do to guard herself against the forces of imperialism at her doorstep.
6 min read. The Chinese approach towards Africa may be different from the European one but will the outcome be the same? By LORENZO BAGNOLI
6 min read. Africa’s middle class is akin to a "stay-behind" operation that sets up secret operatives in the territory it is vacating, says KALUNDI SERUMAGA
4 min read. Two decades ago, a storm was brewing in Kenya’s teacup. Kenya’s smallholder tea farmers were ready to throw in the towel. Inefficiency, bureaucracy and corruption was impoverishing them. Grossly dissatisfied with their fortunes, many were contemplating to uproot their bushes, threatening to send Kenya’s leading export into the sort of crisis that had befallen coffee, […]
17 min read. We live in a world where our certainties, including lines in the sand, the imagination of our boundaries, are crumbling. We are in a season where one of the most significant struggles is that of giving a name to the realities of our now. You know the landscape through which our metaphorical boundaries intend to […]
7 min read. After a twenty-five year absence, I returned to Somalia in the summer of 2016. I didn’t go back to the cosmopolitan city of Mogadishu where I grew up (now perceived as one of the world’s most dangerous cities) but to the federal state of Puntland, where I had been officially invited to attend the Garowe […]
10 min read. We are all born into the world of humanity at an ordained moment in time and space with a spiritual ordained mission yet we are the creators of our destiny. The world I came to was full of turmoil. My parents and their parents had been uprooted from their own homes to go serve settlers […]
20 min read. It is this era of intelligent robots – when there is a fuller convergence between genetic engineering and nanotechnology – biopolitical questions will become central to democratic questions within the Pan-African movement. This article describes the challenges in charting the differences between the Pan-African struggles from above, as manifested in organisations such as the African Union, and Pan-Africanism from below, as manifested in the Black Lives Matter movement. The author proposes that the Pan-African movement and the unification of Africa represent the frontline forces in the struggle to preserve humanity and save planet Earth from new threats, including unethical uses of biotechnology. Such unification is also premised on the quest for reparative justice, the perseverance of human life and the repair of the planet’s endangered ecosystem.
13 min read. First, an “ancient” African fable. A chicken foraging somewhere in Africa’s bush came across a pawpaw tree that had grown diagonally instead of straight up. A ripe pawpaw was hanging at the end, which the bird could not quite reach, and so decided to walk up the inclined trunk instead. As it perched on the […]
23 min read. To a greater power and a better nature you, free, are subject, and these create the mind in you that the heavens have not in their charge. Therefore, if the world around you goes astray, in you is the cause and in you let it be sought. ~ Marco the Lombard’s counsel, from Dante’s Divine […]
20 min read. Mea maxima culpa. I have not engaged with the idea of the post-colonial before. Not overtly. I didn’t notice it, you see. And that is the politest way of putting it. But I have heard about it in dribs and drabs, as one hears about people from a distant and fascinating culture that point at […]
9 min read. The neoliberal order that powered economic growth and technological progress between 1989 and 2008 is broken. This system, which not only provided the architectural designs to Reaganomics and Thatcherism, but also created a nomenclature peppered with terms such as free trade, privatisation, deregulation, open markets, and reductions in government spending, has now been proven bankrupt. […]
8 min read. Nairobi, Kenya – Three months before the end of the last millennium, Africa’s arguably greatest leader-president breathed his last in a big city hospital, far away from the peasants who held him in awe and whom he loved to banter with so much. On October 14, 1999, Africa woke to the sad news of the demise […]
