Last December I met the impressive Omoyele Sowore, founder of Nigerian online news site, Sahara Reporters. I was chairing an independent media panel in Brooklyn ahead of the World Social Forum in Dakar. Sowore was one of the panelists.  Based in New York City, Sahara Reporters have broken a number of big stories, including events around the country’s former president Umaru Yar’Adua’s sudden passing in 2009.  This profile by Al Jazeera English’s media criticism program, “Listening Post,” reviews Sahara Reporters’ history and impact, but the reporter Yvonne Ndege also takes advantage of her position to settle scores over Sahara Reporters’ criticism of her reporting of attempts by the family and supporters of the then-unconscious, now deceased Nigerian President Umaru Yar’Adua, to insist that he was in good heath and still able to govern the country:

Further Reading

Kagame’s hidden war

Rwanda’s military deployments in Mozambique and its shadowy ties to M23 rebels in eastern Congo are not isolated interventions, rather part of a broader geopolitical strategy to expand its regional influence.

After the coups

Without institutional foundations or credible partners, the Alliance of Sahel States risks becoming the latest failed experiment in regional integration.

Whose game is remembered?

The Women’s Africa Cup of Nations opens in Morocco amid growing calls to preserve the stories, players, and legacy of the women who built the game—before they’re lost to erasure and algorithm alike.

Sovereignty or supremacy?

As far-right politics gain traction across the globe, some South Africans are embracing Trumpism not out of policy conviction but out of a deeper, more troubling identification.

From Cape To Cairo

When two Africans—one from the south, the other from the north—set out to cross the continent, they raised the question: how easy is it for an African to move in their own land?