Make Sense of the world
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In 2018, the President of the United States Donald Trump posted a rather enigmatic tweet about“farm seizures and expropriations and the large scale killing of farmers” by the South African government. What initially seemed puzzling was soon everywhere. A few days later, during the former UK...
Democracy is in crisis across the globe. The problem of understanding what “the people” want or whose authority they will accept has become a dilemma for both the new democracies with their fragile economies that emerged in the period of European decolonization following World War II and the...
The violation of human rights across the African continent began as a struggle for self-rule in the mid-20th century. Except for Liberia, which European countries assumed was an American colony, and Ethiopia, which was never colonized due to Haile Selassie’s resistance to Italian invasion,...
The African continent is home to 54 countries, more than 1.2 billion people and around 2,000 languages. Its challenges and success stories are as diverse as the breadth of its landmass. In terms of GDP growth, Africa is the world’s second fastest-developing region. A 2018 report by the Overseas...
“No one lays claim to Nigeria.” It was a statement made casually by my boss at work, yet it carried such weight in my young mind. Perhaps this is the worst sin of all that we leisurely walk through our country like it doesn’t belong to us, casually engaging in tribalism and nepotism as we...
Today’s protesters have a leg up on their counterparts from the Arab Spring of 2011. Momentous developments across North and East Africa suggest the long-drawn-out process of political transition in the region — as well as the Middle East — is still in its infancy. So too does popular...
A decade until 2030 looks like a long time, but not when the world is faced with crises on multiple fronts that require sustained action. The world was intended to be a better place when the international community pledged commitment to the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) after the...
After the ICC acquitted Laurent Gbagbo of crimes against humanity, the fear of renewed violence in Ivory Coast is growing. The roads to peace in Ivory Coast and Liberia have been quite similar. In both cases, external forces and the arrest of political figures responsible for the escalation of...
Central Africans have good reason to be skeptical about the peace process. This week will start the next, and possibly final, round of an African Union-led peace dialogue on the Central African Republic (CAR) held in Khartoum. The talks will bring together the CAR government of the 14 armed...
In many ongoing armed conflicts, water has been used as a weapon of war, but it can also be a strong instrument of peace. Today, the world is increasingly aware of the dramatic meaning of water. Water stress and water-related disasters are among the main consequences of global warming and have...
The lack of technology policy and its poor implementation can lead to economic and political instability, and the effects of this are magnified in African countries with weak rule of law. One of the poorest countries in Africa is getting serious about going digital. In October, the Malawian...
