South Africa

Infrastructure before enforcement: Why Kenya’s speed camera ambush breaks the social contract

As the National Transport and Safety Authority rolls out automated speed cameras under a rushed multibillion-shilling PPP, motorists face steep penalties despite widespread missing road signage. While ...
South Africa

Zambia at a crossroads: Preserving democracy beyond the ballot

Zambia’s peaceful polling day has given way to a far more precarious test: a nationwide suspension of vote counting, competing victory claims and allegations of electoral interference. The emerging ...
South Africa

Education is neither a commercial venture nor a credit facility but a basic need and a public good

We are living through a profound contradiction in how our state treats its young. In the speeches, they are our “youth dividend,” the hustler generation whose energy will build the nation. In the ...
South Africa

The third global wave of autocratization One playbook, two instruments: Legal façades and structural decay in the world, with Indonesia and Kenya as case studies

The third global wave of autocratization One playbook, two instruments: Legal façades and structural decay in the world, with Indonesia and Kenya as case studies The modern autocrat doesn’t need a ...
South Africa

The African Bitcoin ecosystem has a credibility crisis

Bitcoin promised Africa a radical path to monetary sovereignty, bypassing legacy colonial currency traps. Today, that revolutionary potential is being hollowed out by a performative, NGO-style savior ...
South Africa

To be Black is to be foreign and Othered: Weaponising colonial borders to fracture PanAfrican unity

In South Africa and across the globe, systemic governance failures are being weaponized into rampant anti-Black xenophobia. This calculated ethno-nationalism forces oppressed communities to project ...
South Africa

Power, pleasure and patriarchy: why The Polygamist on Netflix is captivating viewers

Power and pleasure collide with Black hopes and dreams in the show that has sparked global conversation. It tracks the fatal ruptures in what seems like a successful upper class family, the Gomoras.
South Africa

IMF’s economic terrorism: Structural adjustment, “Capitalogenic” disease, and the fight to hold the World Bank accountable

From Washington’s Structural Adjustment Programs to a Nairobi courtroom — and a June 25 ruling that shielded the IMF even as it kept the case alive — a decades-long battle to make global lenders ...
South Africa

Ceasefire but not a grand bargain between the United States and Iran

Born of exhaustion rather than peace, the new U.S.–Iran Memorandum of Understanding marks a pivotal shift in West Asian politics. Despite unleashing overwhelming military force to cripple Tehran, ...
South Africa

Did Kenya’s Gen Z protests achieve anything? An economist weighs up what’s changed and what’s stayed the same

Kenya’s Gen Z-led protests of 2024 drew global headlines. For weeks, young people mobilised against proposed tax increases, the rising cost of living, unemployment, corruption and what they saw as an ...
South Africa

Lithium Mining in the Democratic Republic of Congo: A new mineral rush spearheaded by the United States, Europe, and other major powers

Lithium Mining in the Democratic Republic of Congo: A new mineral rush spearheaded by the United States, Europe, and other major powers Lithium, the “white gold” driving the green energy transition, ...
South Africa

Kenya’s protests against the Ebola Quarantine Facility are as much about the economy as they are about sovereignty

A proposed U.S.-funded Ebola quarantine facility ignited fiery protests across Kenya, leaving two dead and forcing a High Court transparency order. But this isn’t just a health crisis. The controversy ...