The façades of liberal democracy
Once we dismiss the fiction that Enlightenment liberalism and liberal democracy will inoculate western society from fascism, we can begin the project of actively combating right-wing extremism.
Politics
The poverty of poor economics
The winners of the Nobel Prize in Economics experiment on the poor, but their research doesn't solve poverty.
Eyes on the Prize
Does the peace deal between Ethiopia and Eritrea—now rewarded with a Nobel Prize—bring the kind of cooperation between the two countries that it aspired to do a year ago?
The place of race in Cuba
Cuba achieved more for Afro-Cubans in 50 odd years than in the 400 years before that. However, socialism did not resolve the question of racism on the island.
No country for poor men
Rwanda is juking its development statistics as the international community turns a blind eye to the human rights abuses of Paul Kagame's authoritarian rule.
Self-devouring growth
In Africa, the consequences of the growth-at-all costs model are starting to reveal themselves, and they're not pretty.
Is the nation state the best we got?
What lessons can we draw from 1960s and 1970s anticolonialism and pan-Africanism to rethink the nation state today?
Mugabe and the tradition to not speak ill of the dead
What is the proper way for young Zimbabweans to remember Robert Mugabe's legacy?
The making of Mugabe’s intolerance
How an autocratic strain of pan-Africanism of the early 1960s shaped Robert Mugabe.
It’s time to talk prison abolition in South Africa
Can policing deliver justice in South Africa? The short answer to that question has been, decidedly, no.
The problem with microcredit in Africa
The microcredit industry is not a driver of development and poverty reduction, but quite the opposite: it is an "anti-developmental" intervention.
We all the way live
Live TV broadcasts of political rallies, funerals and press conferences, may be more decisive than social media in shaping mass debate in South Africa.
The emptiness of an ending
With Mugabe's death, might there be space for a new self-definition as a nation in Zimbabwe, as a broad family of nationals, with a shared national project?
Nativism and narrow nationalism in South African politics
The question of who belongs in South Africa, stains any project that aims to build a more equal and inclusive society.
Jour des morts
Comment le vol de cadavres au Gabon reflète la politique du pays.
Day of the dead
How stealing corpses in Gabon reflects its politics.
The ghost battalion
On the Sudanese Professionals Association (SPA) the organized force behind the revolutionary uprising in Sudan.
The manifestation of climate injustice
Following the new UN report on climate change and agricultural land use, David S. Williams highlights the effects climate changes will have on communities in informal urban areas.
‘We are now treated the same as men. We have exactly the same rights’
How women farm workers in North Africa, specifically Morocco, are achieving justice on the job.
Silencing the national anthem
Last month the government of South Sudan passed a decree that the national anthem could not be sung not in the presence of the President. What could be behind this decision?