To borrow the words of Rolling Stone journalist Matt Taibbi, graft in Kenya “is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money”. Audacious, multi-billion-shilling, high-level scams permeate the Kenyan government and much of the country’s economic system. The Hansard of 17 April 2003 records that a third of Kenya’s revenues have been stolen over the last two decades. Prof Peter Anyang’ Nyong’o, then minister for Planning and National Development, told Parliament, “We know for certain that we h ..read more

In many ethnically diverse countries, state-building does not marginalize the dominant ethnic group and the state generally reflects or at least is not antithetical to their aspirations. This is not the case in Ethiopia where the Oromo people have been locked in a century-long battle with the Ethiopian state, despite forming an estimated half of the country’s population and inhabiting a large territory rich in natural resources. Several of the European imperial powers in earnest and later the US have supplied the necessary material and ideological support to the Ethiopian state, arresting the ..read more

From 30th November to 12th December, governments, intergovernmental agencies, the private sector, civil society, donors and other stakeholders will be represented at the 28th United Nations Climate Change negotiations (Conference of the Parties – COP28) in Dubai. Governments will convene to pick up the discussion from where they left off during last year’s negotiations in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt, where the parties agreed to provide “loss and damage” funding for vulnerable countries hit hard by climate disasters. The Loss and Damage Fund is a form of “payment for past actions that contributed t ..read more

The East African Community (EAC), whose goal is to achieve economic and political federation, brings together three former British colonies – Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania – and newer members Rwanda, Burundi, South Sudan, and most recently the Democratic Republic of Congo. Somalia first applied to join the EAC in 2012 but with fighting still ongoing on the outskirts of Mogadishu, joining the bloc was impossible at the time. Eleven years later, joining the bloc would consolidate the significant progress in governance and security and, therefore, Somalia should be admitted into the EAC without undue ..read more

On October 15 South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, decked in a black and white keffiyeh, pledged his solidarity with the people of Palestine. He was surrounded by colleagues in the same attire holding Palestine flags. This was a week after Israel began its bombardment of the Gaza strip. The situation in Gaza is an even worse nightmare than usual, with the death toll from Israeli strikes now exceeding  11,000 civilians, half of whom are children. Much of the open-air prison housing more than two million people has been reduced to rubble. South Africa’s already critical rheto ..read more

The proposed Coffee Act 2023 has serious limitations and the reforms it recommends may fail to halt the rapid decline of a crucial sector that is in dire need of an urgent rescue agenda to restore it to its former glory. The Bill currently before parliament does not sufficiently address the question of how it will tackle the twin challenges facing the coffee sector – an opaque marketing system that has over the years been accused of defrauding smallholder farmers who largely sell their coffee beans through the Nairobi Coffee Exchange (NCE) auction, and decline in production and productiv ..read more

South Africa’s two main political parties recently took to parliament to set out their official positions on Gaza-Israel conflict and, bar differences in tone and delivery, they seem, on the face of it, to be on the same page, broadly speaking. On behalf of the ANC, International Relations and Cooperation Minister Naledi Pandor said her party believes Israel has a right to exist as a state alongside a state of Palestine and that this has been the long-standing view of the ANC. The International Relations and Cooperation spokesperson for the main opposition Democratic Alliance (DA) said t ..read more

It’s happening again. A Rwandan-backed rebel force threatens the Congolese provincial capital of Goma while foreign intervention is cobbled together to bail out the struggling Congolese army. Unlike the last two or three times this happened, the conflict faces the prospect of horrific escalation into interstate war. Rwandan and Kenyan troops are racing headfirst into a confrontation. As Kenya airlifts troops into the east under the flag of the East Africa Community (EAC), the Rwandan soldiers embedded within the M23 rebellion show no signs of backing down. These two African states, each claim ..read more

Guinea’s capital, Conakry, was the scene of dramatic events over the weekend of November 4-5. In the early hours of Saturday morning, heavy gunfire broke out in central Conakry with reports soon circulating that the former Guinean president and three others had escaped—or been kidnapped, depending on the account—from Guinea’s main prison. Rumors started flying. Was it a jailbreak? Was it hostage-taking? Was it a diversion tactic during an attempted coup? Aside from their sensational nature, these events matter deeply. In Guinea and beyond, they raise vital questions about ..read more

A year ago, on 2 November 2022, the government of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia (GoE) and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) signed a Permanent Cessation of Hostilities Agreement (CoHA) in Pretoria, South Africa. Every Western country including the USA welcomed the agreement that was meant to put an end to the two-year civil war raging in the country. Signed not only by the parties to the conflict but also by an African Union (AU) panel of mediators, with the US government acting as guarantors, the agreement is, however, failing to fulfil even the most basic promises it ..read more