Landscapes of ambition and neglect
While Ethiopia’s leaders chase shiny new projects that are grand monuments to themselves and modernity, they ignore the country’s rich, natural heritage.
Governance
The venality of the Kenyan MP
In Kenya, elected office does not represent a duty to represent ordinary citizens, but an opportunity for personal enrichment.
Who is hustling who?
In Kenya, political elites across the spectrum are trying to sell off the country for themselves—capitulation is inevitable.
Apartheid nostalgia
South Africans agree that redistribution and economic security are urgent. But will they arrive via a deepening of democracy and public accountability, or a return to authoritarianism?
Everything the government does
On the South African Department of Tourism's pending sponsorship deal with Premier League football club, Tottenham Hotspur.
Museveni’s goons are polite
Uganda’s rulers don’t get that clobbering words is impossible. The pen will escape every hammer, and cross borders to haunt oppressors, even if the authors are no longer around.
Milk in the Upington sun
Fear of the future, longing for the past: the new story in South African politics.
William Ruto and the evangelicals
Which theology we will use to make sense of the relationship between church and state in Kenya?
New dawn or false dawn?
South Africa’s ruling party’s devotion to its policy of cadre deployment is an indication that it values its own power more than the public interest.
More than a national pastime
Nigeria did not qualify for Qatar 2022. The troubles in the country's football administration reflect the crises in the nation’s political culture.
What is it about the Kenyan postcolonial state?
The lesson from political economist Rok Ajulu’s academic work and activism: it’s not enough to change the “tenants,” but fight to change both the “state” and all of its houses.
Guinean first ladies and big (political) business
The wives of (former) heads of state form an important part of the political elite in Guinea, considerably shaping the country’s sociopolitical and economic past and present.
New world disorder
The world has changed significantly since the 2008 financial crisis. But the roots of today’s disorder, stretch further back than we think. This week on the AIAC Podcast, we discuss.
Are strongmen or liberal democracy our only choices?
With the recent series of military coups, especially in West Africa, what is left for the future of politics on the African continent?
The humanization of public monsters
Charles Njonjo's legacy is as member of a powerful group of Kikuyu chauvinists who surrounded Jomo Kenyatta and corrupted the state.
To give the horror a name
The dissonance between what is communicated through local and international propaganda machines and what is actually taking place across the streets of Sudan.
Uganda’s most controversial and disruptive politician
A new book revisits the career of Uganda’s first elected prime minister, Benedicto Kiwanuka, his followers, and political ideas.
Corruption is a class project
Different factions of South Africa's ruling elite are implicated in looting and profiting from the state. South Africans should take an attitude of a plague on both their houses.
Ignorance, denial and insurgency in Mozambique
A new and different state is necessary to manage the complex problems in the region, but is it possible under the current regime that has fed the conflict?
Reimagining local government in South Africa
If re-municipalization—returning a privatized service to local public control—is to work in South Africa, we need other forms of social contracting between municipalities and citizens.