8 min read. Beyond the linguistic cannibalism that characterises much of the critique against it, is neoliberalism Africa’s war?
9 min read. From Khartoum to Kampala, from Ouagadougou to Lusaka, the revolt of Africa’s youth against the ageing strongmen of the liberation era is reconfiguring society in unprecedented ways. At the core of the new revolution: the unstoppable march of urbanisation.
10 min read. The Judiciary is under sustained assault from the Executive branch of government and buck-passing has come to distinguish Kenya’s war on corruption. Beyond the blame games, there exist opportunities for Kenyans to break the yoke of oppressive corruption and chart a new course towards a liberated future argues WILLY MUTUNGA.
8 min read. In a capitalist society divided into classes, you have broadly two types of intellectuals. There are those who produce rationalizations, justifications and mystifications to maintain and reproduce the status quo of inequality and inequity in favour of capital. Then there are those who question and challenge dominant knowledge and try to demystify and debunk hegemonic forms of knowledge and ideologies. Some go further to produce and articulate alternative forms of knowledge and ideologies to propel the struggle of the ruled, the oppressed and the downtrodden. They are involved in constructing counter-hegemonies. By ISSA SHIVJI
9 min read. The farcical rigging of the DR Congo election was only a surprise to the extent that fellow African presidents and international observer missions were not in on Joseph Kabila’s novel innovation: fixing the election for an opposition candidate. With 20 African elections set for 2019, does the threat of the Congolese example confirm a final retreat of electoral democracy on the continent? What is to be done? By MIRIAM ABRAHAM
9 min read. The US is supervising a coup in Venezuela. The pretext: Nicholas Maduro’s brutality, the state’s record of widespread human rights abuses, does not wash. In August 2018, appeals for similar US intervention when Museveni brutally suppressed the youth uprising led by Bobi Wine and his colleagues, were rebuffed. In Zimbabwe, the Mnangagwa government turns on anti-austerity protestors with impunity. Why the double-standards triply-distilled? It’s all about debt, the old Washington Consensus, and the incumbent Big Man’s ability to suppress his people’s right to economic self-determination. By MARY SERUMAGA.
7 min read. Western Kenya’s sugar industry has a productivity problem. Fortunate to have been given several reprieves by COMESA, growers, millers and policymakers have still been unable to move away from the protectionist thinking on which the industry was originally built. But time is running out. Can the industry survive without state protection? By DAVID NDII.
10 min read. In his first address as the group’s Kenyan operations leader, Ahmed Iman Ali declared the country darsh-al-harb - House of War. Four of the five Dusit attackers were Kenyan. Still, the reasons the group focuses on the country, and not others in the region, run contrary to conventional assumptions. By NGALA CHOME.
17 min read. Was Uganda’s economic miracle a donor-inspired lie? A new book mines the data and presents an alternative economic history of the Museveni era. By MARY SERUMAGA
21 min read. Does a country create a people, or do a people create a country? KALUNDI SERUMAGA responds to Mahmood Mamdani’s recent analysis on the political situation in Ethiopia.
