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Cette semaine nous accueillons Serge Sivya, médecin et militant du mouvement lutte pour le changement, Lucha actif en RD Congo. Serge milite au sein de la Lucha depuis les premiers jours de ce mouvement en 2012. Il a été très actif dans les mobilisations pour le respect de la constitution en RDC entre 2015 et 2018. Il a pour cela plusieurs fois été arrêté. Au sein de la Lucha, Serge est actif notamment dans la cellule de Luchologie où il a longtemps contribué à la formation et l’initiation des militants. Serge est aussi membre de African coaching network, un réseau qui forme des mouvement ..read more

Last year, Teodoro Obiang won a 6th term in office with 97% of the vote. He has been in power since 1979, for 43 years. In Obiang’s Equatorial Guinea, there are no independent, critical media, no human rights or anti-corruption organizations, and the one opposition party is seen as being a fig leaf for the dictatorship.  It is difficult to fully grasp the control the government has over society without examining the role of the oil industry. Equatorial Guinea is one of the largest oil producing countries in Africa; the black gold makes up 90% of its exports and gives it an average income ..read more

Welcome to Season 2 of Ukombozi. The Sudanese Revolution of 2018-2019 was a bubbling up of many movements all at once. As Hamid Khalahfallah,  one of our guests here, says: "It was many transitions all at once"––a political, cultural and spiritual one. And then it ended, first with another coup in 2021, and now with brutal fighting between two parts of the regime.  Here we discuss the conflict, but in  also the place of social movements in Sudanese society. One of the reasons we are where we are today is because of the enormous inequalities that Sudanese society faces––since i ..read more

An interview with Thapelo Mohapi, the general secretary of Abahlali baseMjondolo, a socialist shack dwellers' movement in South Africa which organises land occupations, builds communes and campaigns against evictions and xenophobia and for public housing ..read more

On April 17 this year, Sheila Adhiambo Lumumba, a 25-year-old non-binary lesbian, was found murdered in Karatina, Kenya. They had been was raped, strangled, stabbed several times in the neck and eyes and their legs had been broken. The Gay and Lesbian Coalition of Kenya reported than more than half of Kenyans who identify as gay have been assaulted in their lifetime. Meanwhile, it is almost unacceptable to speak out in favor of LGTBQ rights as a mainstream politician in much of Africa. In Kenya, The winner of this year’s presidential election, William Ruto, said in 2015, “The Republic of Kenya ..read more

We interview Leo Zeiling on the life and legacy of Guyanese scholar, activist, and writer Walter Rodney. Rodney's classic "How Europe Underdeveloped Africa" is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, a great occasion to read Zeilig's "A Revolutionary for Our Time: The Walter Rodney Story," which was published this year.We talk about Rodney's legacy, his understanding of race, his approach to international solidarity, and his theory of how Africa's fate has been tethered to capitalist development in the West. Send your questions and comments in! To jkstearn [at] sfu [dot] ca; baumafred [at ..read more

Karibuni. This week, we are excited to be joined by Sabatho Nyamsenda, an African scholar, writer and thinker. Sabatho is a faculty member in the Department of Political Science and Public Administration at the University of Dar es Salaam. He is involved in both scholarship and activism in matters pertaining to the agrarian question, pan-Africanism, the struggles of the working people, as well as political-economic relations between Tanzania and the industrialized countries.  This interview was our first to be recorded in person––the windows were open in the university, so you can hear so ..read more

Karibuni. This week, we are excited to be joined by Sabatho Nyamsenda, an African scholar, writer and thinker. Sabatho is a faculty member in the Department of Political Science and Public Administration at the University of Dar es Salaam. He is involved in both scholarship and activism in matters pertaining to the agrarian question, pan-Africanism, the struggles of the working people, as well as political-economic relations between Tanzania and the industrialized countries.  This interview was our first to be recorded in person––the windows were open in the university, so you can hear so ..read more

This week, we were joined by Nanjala Nyabola, a leading African scholar, writer and thinker. She has published two books––Digital Democracy, Analogue Politics: How the Internet Era is Transforming Politics in Kenya in 2018; and Travelling While Black: Essays Inspired by a Life on the Move in 2020. She also writes frequently for a host of prominent media outlets in Africa and abroad about the cruelty of western migration policies; the failings of African leaders; the dynamism of youth on the African continent, and many other issues.  On this episode, we discussed:  the need for new p ..read more