Divided loyalties
Somalia’s political landscape is increasingly fragmented due to regional and clan differences. Is this the end of the centralized state and a unified, national identity?
Somalia’s political landscape is increasingly fragmented due to regional and clan differences. Is this the end of the centralized state and a unified, national identity?
The Nigerian presidential candidate’s claim of 'emi lokan' (it’s my turn) reveals complex ethnic politics and a stagnated democracy. Most responses to it, humor and rumor, reflect how Nigerians enact democratic citizenship.
Ethnic enclaves are not unusual in many cities and towns across Sudan, but in Port Sudan, this polarized structure instigated and facilitated communal violence.
Ethnicity did not simply disappear in Kenya’s 2022 elections. Instead, it was a crucible where both sides mobilized historical claims and ideas to win supporters, in ways that could, at times, elude the eye.
The vagueness around who is and isn’t a “tribe of Kenya” is a double-edged sword. The persistence of ethnic classification and counting can be pernicious.
The Indigenous people of the Tibesti mountain range that straddles northern Chad and Libya have been neglected and stigmatized by the elites who control and favor development of the south.
The current political conflict, now a civil war, in Ethiopia partly has its roots in disagreement among elites on how to narrativize Ethiopian history.
Kenya needs to understand the Oromo cause and what is happening across the border in Ethiopia.
The imminent and existential danger to Ethiopia is not Abiy Ahmed and an oppressive government. It is violent ethno-nationalism.
How the Jammeh regime reproduced power in Gambia for more than two decades.
Politics in and about Ethiopia has become so heavily “ethnicized” that we have a difficult time distinguishing between ideology and identity.
The question for Western journalists is this – when it comes to Africa, why do you not tell the whole story of the humanity at work even in times of extreme violence?