It was a birthday present Bassirou Diomaye Faye would not have dreamed of – being announced the President-elect of Senegal on March 25, the day he turned 44, and only weeks after his release from... 

It’s surprising how easily news consumers fall for disinformation, or fake news, as it is now widely known since Donald Trump popularised the phrase during the US Presidency campaign in 2016. I say... 

East or west, home’s best. Many South Africans who have emigrated to foreign climes in the past two decades to escape the ills besetting this country can vouch for that. Some are coming back. And... 

Our neck of the woods, the Southern African Development Community region, last month lost two high-profile personalities, a sitting head of State and a Presidential has-been. While the former,... 

Rhino and elephant poaching afflicts many African countries that are home to these endangered species, and the main driver behind this scourge is seemingly insatiable demand by the Chinese and... 

What’s the common denominator between Kenyan President William Ruto and his Nigerian opposite number, Bola Tinubu? They both have a remarkable penchant for air travel. This has incurred the ire of... 

In a televised announcement on January 28, the West African nations of Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger let it be known they had ceased to be members of the regional bloc in that neck of the woods with... 

Mention of the word ‘welder’ conjures up images of someone wearing heavy-duty protective gear such as a big steel helmet to shield the face from sparks. You wouldn’t think the person behind the... 

Disinformation by political actors is not a new phenomenon to South Africans. Six short years ago, Bell Pottinger, the Guptas’ now defunct UK communications consultancy, executed a spirited... 

Unless one is a football fan or a lover of the music of the late Manu Dibango, one will be hard pressed to say much that is positive about Cameroon, a 475 440 km2 country straddling Central and... 

Ructions in the Horn of Africa Martin Zhuwakinyu 

It’s difficult to tell with any degree of certainty what lies in store for Africa this year, but there seems to be broad consensus that our continent will experience better fortunes on the economic... 

This year has been quite eventful for the African continent, but for me the biggest story has been that, despite the progress made in the two decades to 2020, we don’t seem to have seen the last of... 

Last week I wrote about the latest African craze of exporting skilled citizens to other countries on the continent or abroad as a way of tackling unemployment, especially among the youth. While the... 

I’m in mourning as I pen this piece – it’s only hours after my beloved Bafana Bafana’s 2-0 defeat by football nonentity Rwanda in a qualifier for the 2026 World Cup tournament, to be hosted by... 

A story claiming that a young mother had given birth to ten live babies in a Pretoria hospital in 2021 – which would have been a world record – not only captured the national imagination but also... 

In a stranger-than-fiction incident earlier this month, Transport Minister Sindisiwe Chikunga and two of her armed protectors were ambushed and robbed at gunpoint near Vosloorus, on Gauteng’s East... 

Outrage is one of the criteria media outlets use when selecting the news to include in their coverage. The Russian embassy in South Africa appears to be alive to this, which seems to explain why,... 

Save for several years after his unceremonious ouster as head of State, triggering what some have described as an understandable sulk, former President Thabo Mbeki has never been one to mince his... 

Haiti, an archipelago in the Caribbean Sea with a population of about 11.5-million people, should be fairly well known to the average South African. That’s partly because former President Thabo... 

ChatGPT, the artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot tool, has been around for just under a year, having been unveiled in November last year, yet it has become a major talking point, with the... 

It’s been a few weeks since the curtain came down on the seventy-eighth session of the United Nations (UN) General Assembly. Besides the many great speeches that were delivered, one of the... 

When asked by a journalist to reflect on his ten years as Botswana’s President – from April 2008 to April 2018 – Ian Khama was succinct and unequivocal: “I didn’t enjoy politics. Everybody’s... 

The increased availability and consumption of unhealthy foodstuffs in South Africa – as is the case in many countries – has fuelled what one can only call an obesity or overweight epidemic, what... 

Female heads of State have been something of a rarity in Africa. Current and recent incumbents can be counted on the fingers of one hand: Tanzania’s Samia Suluhu Hassan, who has been at the helm... 

Reality television lovers would be familiar with Keeping up with the Kardashians, the American series that focused on the personal and professional lives of the blended Kardashian-Jenner family and... 

I know there is such a thing as an overkill and I would have stayed clear of Africa’s multilateral institutions this week, having highlighted a few weeks ago how difficult it is at times to be... 

As a concept, ESG – environmental, social and governance – has gathered much momentum in recent years, with a 2022 study by asset management firm Capital Group finding that 89% of investors are... 

I have never warmed to Kenyan President William Ruto, who shot to prominence as an activist for the then governing Kenyan African National Union’s youth wing at the party’s most vicious in the... 

As Kenyan-born public intellectual and pan-Africanist PLO Lumumba often reminds us, there is something distinct about Africans – we are too tolerant of corruption among those who govern us, unlike... 

A couple of weeks back, I disclosed in this column how a nutritionist-designed diet and engaging in physical exercise daily had helped me shed tens of kilos, in the process taming my rampant blood... 

Much as one may try, it’s not always possible to be charitable towards some of Africa’s institutions. The very unexceptional and scandal-prone Pan African Parliament (PAP), which has been hosted by... 

I recently read a magazine article where the writer remarked that he could not remember the last time he had phoned a company and was answered by a human being. This is but one illustration of how... 

I have never made any bones about my dislike for former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson – not after the racist comments about Africans that he made in newspaper columns during his time as a... 

A frequent experience for me during the past 18 months is acquaintances I haven’t seen in a while stealing furtive glances at me in a manner that betrays concern on their part about the state of my... 

South Africa has the unenviable distinction – nay, infamy – of being the most unequal country in the world, with a Gini coefficient of 0.65. This is little wonder, given the country’s unemployment... 

The ubiquitous face mask is now gone. So too have the rigid lockdowns that saw many of us work from home for the better part of the period from 2020 to early 2021. But not all reminders that our... 

Following the sluggish 1990s, the early years of this millennium witnessed spectacular growth in sub-Saharan Africa, giving rise to the Africa Rising narrative – the notion that it was inevitable... 

The term ‘climate apartheid’ has been bandied about to refer to wealthy nations’ ability to pay to escape the overheating, hunger and conflict that ensue from climate change while the rest of the... 

Inflation, unemployment and punitive borrowing costs – read interest rates – are said by those in the know to be sure-fire determinants of whether the citizens of a nation are a miserable lot. With... 

There has been much debate of late – in the media and elsewhere – about whether new Johannesburg mayor Kabelo Gwamanda is capable of leading a city with a R70-billion-plus yearly budget, given his...