Malawi can alleviate poverty and become a model for development and democracy by investing in and improving the quality of human capital, the quality of infrastructure, and the quality of institutions.
Kenyan prisons today carry the DNA of their forebears – the colonial prisons and Mau Mau detention camps. They are about brutalising prisoners into submission and scaring the rest of society into compliance with the state. And like their colonial predecessors, they are also sites of forced labour.
Based on interviews and ethnographic fieldwork in Western Kenya, Mario Schmidt argues that local interpretations of Give Directly’s unconditional cash transfer program unmask how the NGO’s ‘myth of unconditionality’ obscures structural inequalities of the development aid sector. Schmidt argues that in order to tackle these structural inequalities, cash transfers should be ‘ungifted’ and viewed as debts repaid and not as gifts offered.
NGOs have been notably absent in the fight against COVID-19, despite claims they exist solely to ensure accountability and transparency by government.
The undermining of the 2010 constitution by the Executive and an emasculated opposition that has failed to defend constitutionalism threaten to unravel thirty years of constitution-building in Kenya. Will the Kenyan constitution die as a result of this? The quick answer to this question depends almost entirely on who the country chooses to be president in 2022 and on who will be the two speakers of Parliament.
Efforts by Kenya’s Executive to undermine the Judiciary point to a regime that is intent on concentrating decision-making power within itself. Part of the reason why the Judiciary is under pressure is because Parliament is not playing its constitutionally-mandated role in checking the Executive’s power.
The current wrangles in the senate on the revenue allocation formula are a classic example of how the constitution is designed to respond in order to protect itself.
For five decades after Kenya's independence, northern Kenya's political elite blamed the region’s underdevelopment on the central government’s failure to allocate adequate resources. Yet eight years after devolution, the level of development does not match the resources that have been allocated to the region.
Ethiopia’s delicate transition is under severe strain. A ferocious burst of communal violence in July, sparked by the murder of a popular Oromo singer, and which claimed more than 200 lives, underscores the grave conflict risks this populous Horn of Africa nation faces.
Global emerging trends suggest that cyberbullying is now recognised as a serious threat not just to the physical health of people, but also to their emotional well-being. Social network spheres in Kenya and around the world have become the new frontiers for not just gender-based and sexual violence, but also for the expression of toxic, patriarchal and violent masculinities.
