Although not recognized internationally, the self-declared republic of Somaliland holds its sixth competitive elections on 13 November. Almost all Somaliland’s politicians are directly involved in clan-based politics, which is a threat to the nation’s fragile democracy.

Marren struggled tirelessly towards the improvement of women’s participation in politics and the reduction of women’s poverty at the household level. She advocated for inclusivity and the revival of the women’s movement in Africa.

Decolonisation of the Afrikan university must be located within the over 1,000-year-old struggle of Black people all over the world against white supremacy. It must aim at organising Black people towards the attainment of a far higher ideal, perhaps best articulated by Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe who said: “We must fight for freedom. For the right to call our souls our own. And we must pay the price!”

Rwanda’s ruler often poses as a Pan-Africanist. But what Pan-Africanist runs a brutal dictatorship implicated in the murder of at least three African presidents and has committed well-documented war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide at home and the Great Lakes  Region? An unrepentant imperialist pawn, no other known African ruler in history has inflicted more humiliation on his fellow citizens and other Africans than Kagame.

Sai Ramakrishna Karuturi, founder of Indian agribusiness giant Karuturi Global and self-proclaimed pioneer of the cut flower revolution in the world, is leaving Ethiopia. Empty-handed. After 10 years, it has now dawned on him that the 300,000 hectares of farmland he was offered by the government was a con. That is what happens to anyone who does business with the kleptocracy in Addis.

A UN commission is urging the ICC to indict officials of the Burundian government for crimes against humanity as soon as possible, but Russia, China, and the African Union so oppose an indictment that it could cost the court what little political legitimacy it has left.

If you want to build a monument to a great man, build one that needs no plaques on it, that cannot be toppled by future vagabond executives, that will ensure that his ideas and thoughts, ideals and principles are shared, expounded, debated, criticized and widely diffused through all the institutions where minds are molded and the future prepared.

The growing boycott against U.S. football in the U.S. should not be seen simply as a protest against the racist treatment of former U.S. San Francisco Quarterback Colin Kaepernick because of his protests against police terrorism in 2016. Instead, Africans and all peace and justice loving people must see this boycott as an extension of African people’s worldwide cry for justice and self-determination. 

The ruling by Kenya’s Supreme Court strengthens the independence of the judiciary and places this institution as a key player and arbiter in future elections and on issues that affect peace and security in Kenya. Future rulings on elections – either in favour of or against a political party or coalition – can be received as the final outcome and prevent conflict.

The Kenyan presidential election that was overturned by the Supreme Court has raised serious questions about the agendas of foreign election observers. Many of the observers were quick to give the poll a clean bill of health – even urging opposition leader Raila Odinga to concede. Now they are facing credibility crisis. The European Union’s Marietje Schaake has been trying to save face.

The South African anti-apartheid icon and Nobel Peace laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu has called on Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi to end the violence against her country’s Rohingya Muslim minority.

The Gnassingbe family, backed by France, has ruled Togo for 50 years. Popular protests organized by opposition leaders in recent weeks have threatened the regime and forced the cancellation of a summit sponsored by Israel. The apartheid rulers in Tel Aviv are keen to consolidate their power in Africa to cut off any support from the continent for liberation of the Palestinian people.

The incumbent in an election has many opportunities to use state resources unlike the opposition. That is why the Constitution and election laws insist on creating a level playing field. But some of the campaign activities of Uhuru Kenyatta have beached the law. A president re-elected on the basis of the special position, immunities, impunities and privileges cannot really command the respect of all citizens and others.

Rwanda is often highlighted globally for its large numbers of women in elective politics. But those are women who only sing Paul Kagame’s praises. Dianne Rwigara and Victoire Ingabire are different. They have exposed the inhuman, fearful and anti-African character of Kagame and his regime. These fearless freedom fighters challenge Rwandans and Africans to resist despots and their foreign backers.

Kenya’s historic Supreme Court decision nullifying a presidential election, the first in Africa, is a slap in the face of the priestly international observers who for so long remained the self-appointed custodians of democracy in Africa without whose verdict and blessings Africa couldn’t conduct a genuine election.

The historic ruling raises a number of fundamental questions on the capacity of electoral management bodies in Africa to conduct free, fair, transparent, credible and peaceful elections; the deployment of new technology in the electoral process; functions of poll observers, and the role of the judiciary in the continents’s democratic consolidation.

Twenty Democrats and five Republicans have signed on as co-sponsors of the Elie Wiesel Genocide and Mass Atrocities Prevention Act. Much of this Orwellian movement is coordinated within the elite, richly resourced, corporate funded, ideological bastions of the Democratic Party.

The expanding wars in Afghanistan, conflict with North Korea, the U.S. African Command (AFRICOM), U.S. intervention in Venezuela, proposals to increase the military budget by $75 billion, and the war on African/Black people are all interrelated expressions of the systemic violence that the US state is waging and prepared to wage to salvage its rapidly declining power.

River Nile is steeped in Egyptian mythology. But the waters of the Nile are a crucial resource for several other countries. Conflicts over the world's longest river, even in recent times, have almost led to war. This should not be the case. The Nile waters must be managed as a source of cooperation and sustainable development for all the countries involved.

On 1 September 2017, the Supreme Court of Kenya delivered a historic ruling: it nullified the re-election of Uhuru Kenyatta as president citing irregularities in the 8 August poll. The ruling has important lessons for election management in Africa and the world.

The current debate about “restructuring” Nigeria so as to meet the needs of the people is unenlightening. There is no clarity among the proponents about what restructuring means, to begin with. More importantly, pursuing national solutions based on ethnicity – when ethnic identity is a mere social construct – is backward. What Nigeria needs is democracy.

Even if embattled President Zuma were to leave (and replaced by, say, Cyril Ramaphosa), the country is nowhere near getting out of its political crisis.  Why not? It is because the problem lies, essentially, in the captured polity of the South African state and economy.  This has deep historical and systemic roots.

Since independence 53 years ago, Kenya has had four presidents – three of them from one ethnic community. Control of state power has ensured that the Kikuyu and related groups have benefited from national wealth far more than other communities. Recently, economist Dr. David Ndii sensationally called on those communities that feel excluded to secede.

Nation building is a serious business that requires clarity of vision and self-sacrifice, preparing the grounds for succeeding generations to prosper. It is not the prestige and grandeur of office that facilitates development and progress but the due attendance to the responsibilities of office.

Containers have become a well-integrated and indispensable part of our global capitalist trade system. What we don’t always fully realize, however, is what implications this containerization has for the daily lives of residents living in neighbourhoods nearby ports.

Attempts to foster a Black capitalist class in South Africa in co-operation with white capital have failed spectacularly. The price that white capital extracted for their co-operation was a neoliberal state that trapped the Black working class and poor in unemployment, inequality, poverty and gender based violence inherited from Apartheid and made worse.

What I find ironical is that you should visit the University of Cape Town as a reform evangelist when the spirit of the #RhodesMustFall which you are celebrating has been quietly and steadily stirring in Makerere Institute of Social Research since last year (and even long before that), largely due to your capricious  and dishonest leadership.

Following the 8 August 2017 elections whose results are disputed, the Government of Kenya embarked on a crackdown on selected non-governmental organizations. There have also been reports of killings and sexual harassment by police and suspected state-sponsored gangs especially in urban slums assumed to be support bases of the opposition NASA coalition.

Taking advantage of media interest in protests over monuments to historical figures with racist views, activists in Halifax are pushing to remove commemorations of two individuals who helped conquer Africa. And there’s no lack of other such memorials to target across the Great White North.

From a humble centre for American Studies, the Salzburg Global Seminar now runs several academies and programmes focusing on imagination, sustainability and justice, among other topical issues of global concern. It also produces several publications on various themes and has several institutional and individual donors and partners across the globe.

Over the last 38 years, particularly since the end of the civil war in 2002, President Dos Santos has ruled Angola through securitisation of the society, repressing all dissent and restricting freedom of expression, association and assembly. Will space for civil participation open up after one of Africa’s longest serving rulers leaves power following elections this week?

The book ploughs through the complex issues relating judicial struggles over sexual and gender-based discrimination, social justice and poverty and the adjudication of presidential elections in East Africa.

If the US wants to create jobs and promote consumption of America-made products by Americans as Trump claimed during his electoral campaign, it will be hard for him to achieve such goals. The US economy is strongly tied to other economies around the world. With Trump’s rhetoric about protectionism and nationalism in an increasingly globalised world, it would be interesting to see how the US charts alone its trade and economic future.

As he launched the African Regional Centre of the New Development Bank (NDB) in Johannesburg on Thursday, nearly 18 months behind schedule, South African President Jacob Zuma must have had mixed feelings. Strife-riven Brazil, Russia, India and China are more risky allies than Zuma reckoned when in 2010 he accepted Beijing’s invitation to join the club.

Global resource extraction interests in collaboration with corrupt local elites are providing incentives for a genocide against Indigenous people in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and a virtual media blackout allows this travesty to continue unchecked.

Bankie was a Pan-Africanist in his own class. He would not want Pan-Africanists to fall into sentimentalism about his passing on to the Ancestral world. Rather he would want us to dedicate our work to the liberation of the African people, particularly working towards black people’s knowledge of self.

Like many young people across Africa, Ugandan youth face the challenge of acquiring appropriate skills and deploying them in achieving their dreams. An essay competition at Kampala International University gave students the opportunity to reflect on this issue and to explore solutions to youth unemployment.

Indicative was the debate preceding the vote: not a single speaker spoke in defense of President Zuma, who after all is also the party leader. The opposition was eager to explain that the motion was not about removing the ANC from government, but Zuma from presidency. In contrast, those taking the floor for the ANC, appealed to members to protect the government from regime change and not abandon the party loyalty.

 “August 2 is the anniversary of the beginning of the Second Congo War, so we commemorate it to remind Congolese communities at home and abroad that since that date, millions of Congolese have been killed, raped, kidnapped, and enslaved for our natural resources. We need to remember them and work to bring an end to the killing."

Nigeria’s historic problem of failed nation-building cannot be cured by merely amending the flawed constitution handed down by the military in 1999. The exercise is futile. What the country needs is a national Constituent Assembly to draw up a new constitution restructuring Nigeria, which then should be put to a referendum.

President Donald J. Trump has withdrawn the U.S. from the Paris Climate Accord offending the Europeans, particularly Germany, and isolating his country from the rest of the world.  Moreover his views on climate change disregard the facts this article will elaborate.

The Canadian mining giant Barrick Gold’s African subsidiary, Acacia Mining, is embroiled in a major political conflict in Tanzania. With growing evidence of its failure to pay royalties and tax, Acacia has been condemned by President Magufuli, had its exports restricted and slapped with a massive tax bill. Barrick enjoys considerable government backing.