Man of action
An interview with Brian Peterson, author of a new biography of Thomas Sankara. Peterson positions 1980s Burkina Faso as counterhegemonic to the neoliberal transition then.
neoliberalism
The class curse
How is Kenya's "new middle class" contributing to a pervasive low-quality oppression that leaves Kenyans feeling hopeless?
What is learning for?
The ideal South African is not the citizen but the consumer, and this is impressed upon children immediately when some are sent to private schools.
The global and class inequalities of fossil fuel subsidy reform
Climate activists and leftists should tread cautiously when they use the climate argument to support fossil fuel subsidy reform in Africa.
Black faces in high places
The pan-African left should greet Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala’s likely promotion at the World Trade Organization with extreme caution.
The business of Black death
The global public health industry is complicit in the reproduction of “the African tragedy.”
Lessons from Africa’s past to cope with COVID-19
How managing COVID-19 and other crises necessitates Africa’s structural transformation, and what we can learn from the early post-independence development projects.
Pan-Africanism begins at home
Official Ghanaian pan-Africanism is now less motivated by African liberation and solidarity and more by profit incentives. Ghana’s Year of Return is the best example of this.
A private city
Eko Atlantic in Lagos, like Tatu City in Nairobi, Kenya; Hope City in Accra, Ghana; and Cité le Fleuve in Kinshasa, DRC, point to the rise of private cities. What does it mean for the rest of us?
Global finance and charity killed African healthcare
What happened to the once universally accepted idea of healthcare for all?
Kenya’s prison industrial complex
The fundamental flaws in President Uhuru Kenyatta's plan to make jails profitable.
Ghana responds to the coronavirus
Demolishing homes of poor residents in Accra while under lockdown, tells us all we need to know about the Ghanaian state's treatment of working class people.
Where will neoliberalism end?
The question is not how, or where, or when neoliberalism will end, but if it will, and what the left will do about it. The case of South Africa is instructive.
Neoliberalism and the march of impunity in Equatorial Guinea
How does the world's longest serving autocrat remain in power?
Blind to the matatus
The future of Kenya's matatus (commuter buses) and their inherent place in the capital Nairobi's culture and society, is all but absent in the government's neoliberal vision for urban planning.
Pan-African aspirations by neoliberal means
As the African Union embarks on its most ambitious project—creating the largest free-trade area in the world—we have some questions.
Gutting the public sector serves no one
Structural Adjustment Programs, implemented by the World Bank and IMF in developing countries, leave the administrative state especially unequipped to deal with climate change.
Sarkodie and the politics for ‘freedom-making’
Hiplife artist Sarkodie has proposed that what Ghana needs is a dictatorship. This is not inconsistent with his politics, rooted in promoting male success and a patriarchal vision of liberation.
Ethiopia’s capitalist turn
In a break with previous administrations, Ethiopia's new Prime Minister has declared that he favors free market capitalism as his preferred economic model.