Every so often, Africa surprises its critics. Just when one begins to despair that the continent’s human rights institutions are little more than expensive talk shops, along comes a legal challenge... 

In the annals of public procurement, few projects rival one that cost £290-million, resulted in the relocation of just four unwanted immigrants to a faraway country and survived three Prime... 

When former South African President Thabo Mbeki spoke at a recent event marking the sixty-third anniversary of the founding of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) – which morphed into the... 

Weeks before disappearing from public view, Saleh Mamman announced his intention to run for governor of the Nigerian state of Taraba in 2027. Earlier this month, the former federal Power Minister... 

We in South Africa have long comforted ourselves with the assumption that, whatever the continent’s turbulence, our economy is Africa’s biggest, anchored by deep capital markets, globally... 

Concluding an 11-day, four-nation African trip in Malabo, Equatorial Guinea, last month, the Catholic Church’s Pope Leo XIV spoke of the need to promote the dignity of prisoners and not to use the... 

There was a time when Taiwan counted several African countries among its allies. Now, only one remains, and even that final relationship is so constrained that its leader cannot freely visit,... 

On the second leg of a ten-day, four-nation African tour last month, Pope Leo XIV stood before Cameroon’s 93-year-old President Paul Biya in Yaoundé and did what many citizens would think twice... 

As British historian John Dalberg-Acton famously observed in the nineteenth century, power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. This warning feels apt in relation to... 

Angola – one of only two Portuguese-speaking nations in our Southern African neck of the woods – plans to introduce French as a compulsory school subject from the age of ten, a move officials argue... 

Elon Musk has once again failed to get his way, with Starlink, his satellite-based broadband network service, denied a licence in Namibia for failing to comply with local laws requiring a minimum... 

It may be just a football decision, but the ramifications are being felt far beyond the pitch. I’m referring, of course, to the Confederation of African Football (CAF) appeals board decision to... 

Donald Trump was at it again this month, repeating the lie that Somali-born Minnesota Congresswoman Ilhan Omar married her brother to enter the US and describing her country of origin as “a... 

The Russia-Ukraine war, now more than four years old, is the sort of distant conflict we Africans might imagine has nothing to do with us. Except that many of our young men – I have yet to hear of... 

More than 500 people died in the Mediterranean Sea in the first 40 days of 2026 as they desperately attempted to make their way to Europe in search of safety or opportunity, which their often... 

Elsewhere in this edition, I report on upcoming elections in Africa, drawing attention to continental observers’ concern that outcomes that increase political risk could dampen both domestic and... 

It all happened below the media’s radar, but we now know that in the dead of night on January 14 nine men and women were handcuffed, bundled onto a plane and flown from the US to Yaoundé in... 

Regular readers of this column will recall the now scrapped and always controversial 2022 scheme under which the UK proposed to dispatch would-be asylum seekers arriving in small boats from France... 

It has been about a year since the US, traditionally the largest donor to global health initiatives, ended funding for thousands of programmes aimed at fighting infectious diseases and providing... 

The latest edition of the peer-reviewed Science Advances journal, published last month, features an article revealing insights that will humble those who assumed sophistication arrived quite late... 

Africa has a crowded electoral calendar this year, with citizens in more than ten countries poised to cast their ballots. Elections have already taken place in Benin and Uganda, with the rest of... 

Last week, Rosita Salvador Mubiango breathed her last in a rural southern Mozambican hospital where she had been admitted for weeks, her young life cruelly snuffed out by a blood disorder she had... 

They say death and taxes are the only certainties in life. For me – and a growing number of others – a third now definitely applies: I will never be allowed into the US, which has made it clear... 

Dear Africa in 2030, I write to you from the tail end of 2025, a year marked by restlessness – from Gen Z protests to fraught elections and a coup in Guinea-Bissau only days before the time of... 

A few months back, I wrote in this column about insurgents holding boardroom veto power over development projects in Africa, referencing, among others, TotalEnergies’ $20-billion liquefied natural... 

There is more in common between Cameroon and Cote d’Ivoire than their shared history as former French colonies: they are led by elderly men who just don’t want to leave power, and both secured new... 

Over the next two days, Johannesburg will play host to the 2025 G20 Leaders’ Summit, which US President Donald Trump has announced he will boycott, calling it a “total disgrace” over his unproven... 

Wole Soyinka needs no introduction in Africa – or shouldn’t. The legendary writer, poet and activist became the continent’s first Nobel Prize in Literature laureate back in 1986, and generations of... 

Africa is not short of autocrats, but what rarely makes the headlines is that some glossy corporations from the Global North act as their enablers, padding their own bank accounts while propping up... 

October has been an event-packed month. We’ve witnessed the passing of Raila Odinga – the President Kenya never had – the electoral defeat of an incumbent head of State, Seychelles’ Wavel... 

The relatively new African phenomenon of the one-term Presidency – the subject of a recent instalment of this column – is not letting up, with the continent’s latest failed wannabe two-term head of... 

There is a fresh tremor running through Africa, where young people – those born in the 1990s and 2000s, the so-called Gen Z – are no longer content to wait for change. The Arab Spring protests that... 

Mozambican officials, desperate to jump-start economic development in the south-eastern African nation, must have breathed a sigh of relief when French energy giant TotalEnergies announced in May... 

As I sat down to write this piece, my mind flashed back to our journalism history classes in college, where the Chicago Daily Tribune’s infamous ‘Dewey defeats Truman’ headline from November 3,... 

Somaliland – which I have previously called “the other Somali republic” in this column to highlight its lesser visibility compared with Somalia, from which it seceded in 1991 but has struggled to... 

Think of any African infrastructure megaproject. Chances are it was built with massive foreign loans. Ethiopia, on the other hand, passed the hat around – almost literally – and built a continental... 

Fake news doesn’t need a newsroom – just misunderstanding, a smartphone and a little fear. That’s all it took in Japan last month when a harmless cultural exchange with four African countries... 

I’ve often lamented in this column the African Union’s (AU’s) dismally impotent threats whenever a military coup occurs in one of its member States, a pattern that has likely contributed to the... 

A new Africa seems to have arrived – one where the dead, if they happen to be former State Presidents or business tycoons, don’t simply rest. Instead, they spark unseemly wrangles between grieving... 

Aliko Dangote, Africa’s wealthiest individual, with a net worth standing at a cool $23-billion-plus, last month stepped down as chair of Dangote Cement, the bedrock of his business empire, just... 

South Africa has the dubious distinction of being the world’s most unequal country, with a Gini co-efficient – a measure of inequality based on per capita consumption – of 0.63. The broader... 

The electoral clock is ticking in Malawi. Voters head to the polls on September 16 to elect new municipal councillors, new MPs and a new President – if they choose not to renew the mandate of the...