International Affairs
Angola Wants a Pan-African Court of Justice
Angola has become the first country to ratify the Malabo Protocol, paving the way for the creation of a true international African court of justice. What does Angola hope to gain from this move, and why now? Read More...
The Prolonged Suffering of Eastern DRC
Since Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo’s descent into cyclical violence in 1996, the conflict has been entangled in regional and international interests and incoherent interventions. Read More...
Tinubu and West Africa’s Growing Coup Belt
President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s re-election as ECOWAS chairman shines light on his first geo-political test which is the handling of the recent coups in West Africa, a situation that can make or mar Nigeria’s foreign policy record. Read More...
A Fanonian Perspective on Israel and Palestine
The perpetual timelessness of repeating historic mistakes can only be combated with timeless, prudent and even prescient logic. Frantz Fanon’s work provides an important perspective to understand the ongoing genocide in Gaza. Read More...
Decolonizing the Language of Political Science
The field of political science has long been dominated by Eurocentric theories and frameworks, leading to the marginalization of alternative epistemologies and worldviews from the Global South, particularly Africa. Read More...
‘Pour le Pays, Pour la Patrie, Mourir est Beau’
Haiti was once a success story of enslaved Africans who withstood French and, subsequently, American imperialism. So much has changed since. Reflecting on Haiti’s national anthem, the ‘Dessalinienne’, I found irony in the descent into madness my country is currently experiencing. Read More...
A Sahel-less ECOWAS
The announcement by Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger of their exit from ECOWAS, 24 years after Mauritania’s exit in 2000, threatens to de-Sahelize the regional bloc. It marks more fundamental problems associated with spatial inequality and its influence in West African national and regional politics that are yet to be addressed head on. Read More...
Nairobi in a Song A Boy, His Father, and Old Tunes
‘To Kenyans, 2023 feels like the year the country dies. But within this Rhumba and Jazz establishment in Nairobi’s Tao, it could as well be 1970,’ Ogwa writes. ‘Perched behind a corner table with two cold bottles of beer sweating before me, I pass a quintessential moment, watching folks of all ages waltz elegantly to Cabo Verde Barefoot Diva, Cesária Évora’s “Partida”... For me, old music is not just entertainment, it’s a compass with which I always find my way back to me.’ Read More...
The Unseen Struggles of a Nigerian Student in the UK Gig Economy From 80-Hour Work Weeks to Fatherhood
In the aftermath of Brexit, the UK experienced a notable shift in migration patterns, attracting previously eschewed non-EU citizens, especially those from former colonies like Nigeria. But this opportunity is a double-edged sword, with immigrants having to resort to illegal employment—at great physical, psychological and legal risk—to cope with the high costs of living. Read More...
Afro-complicity in the United Nations ‘They Are Not a Part of Us’
What Robert A. Wood, Ralph Bunche and Linda Thomas-Greenfield represent is known in the discourse of African ontology as Black complicity—Afro-complicity, if you please. This is a distinct kind of complicity reified when a Black person tries to dispel racist oppressive hegemonic constructs but due to his inability to be critical of the underlying subtleties of Black stereotypes, he ends up becoming the instrument for its advancement. Read More...
