17 min read. The HIV/AIDS pandemic and hardships caused by SAPs led to a dramatic rise in the number of orphanages in Kenya. However, as SIMON NJOROGE notes, the concept of orphanages is alien to Kenyan and African culture. The good news is that global and national shifts in policy could soon see the eradication of orphanages in poor countries.
10 min read. The demise of Project Kenya could be attributed to Kenyans’ inability to reimagine their country as a nation-state with a common set of values that protect and promote the public good. This is largely because they have not created the canons that could provide them with the tools with which to critically examine their society.
9 min read. In 2017, a poll of African millennials revealed that Kenya’s youth are the biggest gamblers on the African continent.
7 min read. Proponents of wildlife conservancies in Northern Kenya argue that they provide a win-win situation for both conservation and pastoralist communities. However, the current push to establish more conservancies in the region may backfire and lead to more conflict.
10 min read. AKOKO AKECH examines whether the “handshake” between opposition leader Raila Odinga and President Uhuru Kenyatta, which resulted in the Building Bridges Initiative (BBI), is truly a people-driven participatory process or merely a tool for the Kenyan political elite to consolidate their power.
6 min read. For more than a decade, the international community has been fed the narrative that the presence of AMISOM troops is critical for the security of Somalia. ABUKAR ARMAN argues that the presence of these troops and various foreign mercenary security-related outfits in Somalia may actually be making security more precarious in this fragile war-torn country.
16 min read. As Kenya’s forgotten mothers get worn out by the load of a nation’s collective misdeeds in pursuit of political power, a day shall come when the Mama Victors will no longer be in a position to continue doing national duty as national trauma-bearers.
6 min read. The spat between the Rwandan and Ugandan leaders may have more to do with their interests in their neighbour Congo than with any ideological or political split, argues KALUNDI SERUMAGA in this second of a three-part series. How long will the DRC remain the hunting ground for foreign predatory forces? And what does this spat say about the future of Pan-Africanism and regional integration?
7 min read. Post-colonial Africa’s historical ideological trajectory has been to insist that all the peoples found within any given set of colonial borders at independence could only be considered as “tribes”. In this first of a three-part series, KALUNDI SERUMAGA examines tribal or ethnic identity in the context of shifting political alliances and loyalties.
6 min read. The rivalry between Italy and France for dominance in African countries is being played out in bizarre and tragic ways. LORENZO BAGNOLI explains.
