The eyes of Africa are this week turned to Kigali, host of the African Union Summit, where a new Chairperson of the AU Commission will be elected. The Summit presents yet another opportunity for African Heads of State and Government to place the continental body on a new path that will genuinely respond to the needs and aspirations of the African people.

Most of Africa’s political and economic elites retain a keen interest in determining how universities’ leadership is constituted. More and more student activities at universities are being organised along political party lines, which attests to new forms of politicisation.

Closing space for African sexual and gender minority groups is about far more than advocacy—it is about accessing critical services that no one else provides.

Gates, who is worth $80 billion, specialises in top-down technicist quick-fixes, which often backfire on the economic shooting range of extreme corporate influence and neoliberal policies. On Sunday, Gates will get even richer, in terms of the moral legitimacy bestowed by the Mandela Lecture.

The struggle for self-determination of the Biafran people will not end until they fully break away from Nigeria, a creation of British colonialists that has never worked. Unlike during the first failed attempt to secede, for the new territory to work it should not include any non-Igbo people.

Entrenched racism going back to the days of slavery is the reason behind frequent killings of Black men by White policemen in America. White officers see themselves as slave masters who must be obeyed without question by the Black slave.

South African colonial modernity fabulously benefited those who prosecuted cruel adventuring; their descendants still enjoy the ill-gotten social wages. 1994 didn’t usher a new society, so decolonisation remains an unfinished undertaking. A national project that rehabilitates and restores the full humanity of the victims of racism is an urgent necessity now.

There is a distinct possibility of a much smaller “Little England” looking at itself in the mirror and asking how it might salvage its relations with Africa in order to continue to get Africa’s resources and markets. This time, Africa should not let England divide and rule it; it must take the opportunity to unite and negotiate as one continent.

Contrary to repeated claims, the Soweto Uprising of 40 years ago was organised and led by student members of the Black Consciousness Movement of Steve Biko. They are the people who politicised other students and imbued them with the revolutionary black consciousness philosophy. They were all found guilty of sedition in the Soweto 11 trial.

Whether it was the Ebola outbreak, drowning of African refugees in the Mediterranean, famines, the return of the god-President, the International Criminal Court or popular uprisings by young people demanding revolutionary change, the out-going Chairperson of the African Union Commission failed Africa. Her successor must be someone who understands, cares about and has a vision for the continent and its people.

The fact that media and information and communications technologies are an important resource for violent religious groups such as Al-Shabaab is a call for investment in media literacy for vulnerable and influential groups that are the target of extremist messages.

Police in Kenya seem to have been under instructions to use lethal force against peaceful protesters in the Western region, which is an opposition stronghold. The Government of Kenya should publicly acknowledge and condemn the killings and maiming of unarmed people by members of the security forces and undertake credible investigations to bring the perpetrators to justice.

Kenya seems to be hurtling inexorably towards another round of politically instigated violence connected to the 2017 elections. Hate speech is on the rise and there are even reports of groups arming themselves. Polarization is especially deepening between the Luo community on the one hand and the Kikuyu-Kalenjin ethnic alliance that rules Kenya.

Racism has succeeded not just in making anti-Black violence a part of normal human existence, but it has also succeeded in making Black people numb to their own pain and suffering, and in many instances, made it normal for Black people to become participants in their own oppression.

The famous college, the oldest institution of higher learning in West Africa, is collapsing under the weight of incompetent leadership, poor facilities and lack of capacity. Only urgent, thoughtful intervention can save Fourah Bay College from imminent death.

Elections for the AU Commission should pass the same rigorous test and uphold the principles that the continental body requires from Member States. Intensive election competition, emanating from a genuine commitment to the Pan-African agenda and with a vision to provide better leadership, would signify marked differences from the past and would result in a more effective and efficient AU.

When the purported leaders of two neighboring countries cannot even talk in a civil, well-mannered, courteous, respectful and thoughtful manner, is there any hope?

The key to sustainable, adequate and predictable financing of Africa’s development no longer lies in the delivery of aid from traditional donors but largely in unlocking the domestic resource potential, so that the continent can harness more of its own revenue for development.

Africa has not benefited substantially from its mineral wealth. It is, therefore, essential for resource-rich nations to tailor their economic policies to effectively harness and utilise mineral revenues to improve the productivity of non-mineral sectors to break out of the extractive enclave.

This article reflects on the status and progress made in the revitalisation of the agriculture sector in Africa. It looks at the challenges that make it difficult to increase food productivity, create decent employment, and end inequalities in our food systems, and what it will take to transform agriculture in Africa.

What is required now, more than ever before, is action. The financing architectures of many African countries need overhauling. They need to engender equity, child rights, transparency and accountability. Unless that is don, the many regional and international commitments that touch on children will remain mere political pronouncements.

Migrant domestic workers in the Middle East and Gulf countries are ranked, with Filipinos at the top commanding the highest salaries, followed by Indonesian and Sri Lankan women, and African women at the bottom. The region has a deeply rooted culture of discrimination against people of African descent.

The renowned radical scholar-activist was murdered 36 years ago because he did not fit into the old political mold, where leaders accepted the colonial structure and wallowed in its fineries, especially the misuse of the machineries of state to silence dissent. His death reminds all progressive people of their responsibility to organize and resist the abuse of state power.

In the 1930s, there was a global Pan African movement for a volunteer army that petitioned Haile Selassie to fight Benito Mussolini’s fascist Italy in occupied Ethiopia. What can this historical Ethiopia solidarity movement tell us about Palestine solidarity and the use of petitions today?  Whatever happens, after such a new petition movement to forge a volunteer armed force of Palestine solidarity gets off the ground, it will be a defining issue.

The answer is that in America, stupid arguments are sometimes allowed to override sane ones, provided the organisation or person peddling the argument is powerful or rich enough. Around 3.7 million American households have a military-grade weapon similar to the one used in Sunday’s mass killings.

While Canadian companies exploit African resources for their own benefit, this country’s charities call on us to join Africa “hope” walks.

Assorted documents found in the FBI files of Stokely Carmichael from 1966 provide a glimpse of the degree to which the federal government under the Lyndon B. Johnson administration sought to curtail and liquidate the advancing civil rights and black power movements of the time period.

Che, the revolutionary thinker and organizer whosebirthday falls on June 14,  has left us two major elements of his legacy. One: Revolution is everything and we as individuals, in isolation, are nothing. And two: Injustice anywhere against anyone is injustice against all of us everywhere.

The joint university experiment, by pooling resources within the same sub-region and drawing on the different strengths of the three member colleges and their respective host countries, represents an early and instructive model of South-South cooperation. 

Ten years after acquiring the Chergui gas concession in Kerkennah through a corrupt deal, and five years after Tunisia’s uprising for bread, freedom and social justice, the British oil and gas company Petrofac faces growing discontent on the island. In the first two weeks of April, Kerkennah was the scene of violent police repression of protests against the oil company.

His often weightless songs came in cascades and cemented his reputation while he avoided opening his mouth so as not to put his foot in it. The absence of substance was disguised and presented as something else but in order to get to it, you had to wade through an endless litter of frilly things and hesitant, incoherent silences and arrogant attitudes. This is indeed Prince’s most remarkable achievement.

The government and policy-makers in Israel can help stop the ongoing genocide of the Igbo by boycotting all dealings with the Nigerian government. For a state like Israel to continue doing business with a genocidal state like Nigeria is not any different from sponsorship of state terrorism.

The boxing champion won many battles in and outside the ring during the 1960s and 1970s. Ali’s life illustrates the role of African Americans in sports and its relationship to the broader struggle against national oppression.

Mozambique, long touted as an African “success story”, is sinking under debt. International lenders and donors have been angered by revelations of at least $2.3 billion in secret loans taken in 2013-4. Inflation is rising and so is the cost of living. The government is clamping down on critics speaking up about the crisis. The future looks uncertain.

Muhammad said he was pleased to come to Ghana - from an America where black people had to struggle for their ordinary human rights - to find back people running their whole country “beautifully”. Americans, he said, were being misinformed that Africans were eating each other and climbing up and down trees.

A family in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa has been battling with the African Union over a piece of property in the past five years. But the family’s predicament is only a small part of a wider struggle under a soulless system that has little regard for the lives of its people.

Kenya’s decision to close down refugee camps hosting hundreds of thousands of people from neighbouring countries is ill advised as it violates international law. What is more, the move will not solve the security challenge posed by Al Shabaab militants. Forcefully returning the refugees to Somalia will aid recruitment into terrorist ranks.

Prof Adu Boahen who joined his ancestors ten years ago, left a worthy legacy to all Ghanaians, especially with regard to what must concern them most – living in freedom as proud citizens; a people able to choose their own governments, and prepared to be unsparing and vocal in their critical evaluation of the performance of those governments, once elected.

Since 100 prostitutes in Lyon, France, occupied a church in 1975 to protest police abuse over 40 years ago, sex workers across the globe have been organizing for their rights to work and to live free from violence and discrimination.

Pan-Africanism as it once was dreamed is dead. In its place—instead of a transnational framework of solidarity deployed to give heart and direction to Africans during the independence and self-determination struggles—we have something that rallies to the defence of rich, powerful men but remains painfully silent about the suffering of the poor and dispossessed.

Empire has mobilized all its devices to end, at any price, the Bolivarian Revolution even at the cost of plunging Venezuela into a bloodbath. But the people will offer fierce resistance to any invasion and volunteers throughout Latin America will come to their aid. Solidarity with the people and the Bolivarian government is now more urgent than ever to prevent the execution of yet another sinister interventionist maneuver in the Global South.

The problem with Nigeria is that the basic logic and structure of its governance is neo-feudal and aristocratic and its salvation requires a radical reinvention and institutionalization as a modern democratic state based on an enriched and lived concept of citizenship.

Kenyan elections have become increasingly delinked from the quest to meet the needs and aspirations of the people. They are almost entirely an elite circus providing the self-absorbed, politically impotent urban middle classes with something to Tweet about - or to pontificate on from the comfort of the bar stool - and the peasants perhaps a few coins or a branded T-shirt and free entertainment every five years.

The Moral Complexities of Eating Meat offers an appetizing sociological account of food politics, contemporary patterns of cultural identity, and the effect of meat-eating as an informal hypothesis of unity that can be useful in a country such as Kenya, whose metaphoric ‘man eat man’ greasy politics are well documented.

The author refreshingly re-engages with the public discourse, rumours, gossips and local idioms of corruption in her native Liberia in a way that strips it of its taken-for-grantedness in popular discourse, and subjects it to a much more rigorous analysis. The book expands the focus of corruption to interrogate its embeddedness in social life and routine forms.