There are two ways to make Africa smaller. You draw it smaller, or you teach the world to look at it that way, and that’s precisely what the Mercator map – which you will find on most office walls... 

A few weeks back, I congratulated Hakainde Hichilema on his re-election as Zambia’s President. I did so with the confidence of a journalist who had watched the votes come in, watched the results... 

Last year, when Donald Trump invited a select group of African leaders to the White House, Liberian President Joseph Boakai found himself on the receiving end of one of those remarks that can sound... 

I have a confession to make: I have always had a bit of a soft spot for Hakainde Hichilema. So, when the Electoral Commission of Zambia confirmed in the wee hours of August 18 that he had secured a... 

We all make mistakes from time to time. Few mistakes, however, manage to place Nigeria in the Sahara Desert and move Mozambique to the Horn of Africa, while relocating several other African... 

Africa’s biggest financial complaint isn’t that it lacks capital, but that it has been paying too much to access it. The continent’s answer is its own credit rating agency, set to open its doors in... 

In an earlier edition of this column, I described 2026 as Africa’s bumper election year because of the unusually crowded electoral calendar across the continent and singled out Zambia’s August 13... 

When South African law-enforcement agents periodically crack down on illegal mining, television cameras invariably find the same subjects: grimy individuals emerging from mine shafts, blinking into... 

Every so often, Africa unveils a corruption scandal so audacious that even the most seasoned investigators momentarily lose the plot: one official pays millions for goods that never existed,... 

Donald Trump’s US is at it again. Just when I thought Washington had exhausted its list of African countries willing to receive migrants it doesn’t want, along comes another. This time, it’s the... 

There was a time when one could buy an air ticket, renew a TV licence, file tax returns, pay a bill or book a doctor’s appointment without downloading anything. Today, almost every service begins... 

Here is a little secret about this column: I pen it (boy, do I actually use a Bic!) ten days before it’s published. So, the creative juices that produced this piece flowed on June 22, and by then... 

There was a time when a university degree came with an almost implicit guarantee: a desk, a payslip, and a place in the middle class. African parents sold cattle and made extraordinary sacrifices... 

Every so often, Africa surprises its critics. Just when one begins to despair that the continent’s human rights institutions are little more than expensive talk shops, along comes a legal challenge... 

In the annals of public procurement, few projects rival one that cost £290-million, resulted in the relocation of just four unwanted immigrants to a faraway country and survived three Prime... 

When former South African President Thabo Mbeki spoke at a recent event marking the sixty-third anniversary of the founding of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) – which morphed into the... 

Weeks before disappearing from public view, Saleh Mamman announced his intention to run for governor of the Nigerian state of Taraba in 2027. Earlier this month, the former federal Power Minister... 

We in South Africa have long comforted ourselves with the assumption that, whatever the continent’s turbulence, our economy is Africa’s biggest, anchored by deep capital markets, globally... 

Concluding an 11-day, four-nation African trip in Malabo, Equatorial Guinea, last month, the Catholic Church’s Pope Leo XIV spoke of the need to promote the dignity of prisoners and not to use the... 

There was a time when Taiwan counted several African countries among its allies. Now, only one remains, and even that final relationship is so constrained that its leader cannot freely visit,... 

On the second leg of a ten-day, four-nation African tour last month, Pope Leo XIV stood before Cameroon’s 93-year-old President Paul Biya in Yaoundé and did what many citizens would think twice... 

As British historian John Dalberg-Acton famously observed in the nineteenth century, power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. This warning feels apt in relation to... 

Angola – one of only two Portuguese-speaking nations in our Southern African neck of the woods – plans to introduce French as a compulsory school subject from the age of ten, a move officials argue... 

Elon Musk has once again failed to get his way, with Starlink, his satellite-based broadband network service, denied a licence in Namibia for failing to comply with local laws requiring a minimum... 

It may be just a football decision, but the ramifications are being felt far beyond the pitch. I’m referring, of course, to the Confederation of African Football (CAF) appeals board decision to... 

Donald Trump was at it again this month, repeating the lie that Somali-born Minnesota Congresswoman Ilhan Omar married her brother to enter the US and describing her country of origin as “a... 

The Russia-Ukraine war, now more than four years old, is the sort of distant conflict we Africans might imagine has nothing to do with us. Except that many of our young men – I have yet to hear of... 

More than 500 people died in the Mediterranean Sea in the first 40 days of 2026 as they desperately attempted to make their way to Europe in search of safety or opportunity, which their often... 

Elsewhere in this edition, I report on upcoming elections in Africa, drawing attention to continental observers’ concern that outcomes that increase political risk could dampen both domestic and... 

It all happened below the media’s radar, but we now know that in the dead of night on January 14 nine men and women were handcuffed, bundled onto a plane and flown from the US to Yaoundé in... 

Regular readers of this column will recall the now scrapped and always controversial 2022 scheme under which the UK proposed to dispatch would-be asylum seekers arriving in small boats from France... 

It has been about a year since the US, traditionally the largest donor to global health initiatives, ended funding for thousands of programmes aimed at fighting infectious diseases and providing... 

The latest edition of the peer-reviewed Science Advances journal, published last month, features an article revealing insights that will humble those who assumed sophistication arrived quite late... 

Africa has a crowded electoral calendar this year, with citizens in more than ten countries poised to cast their ballots. Elections have already taken place in Benin and Uganda, with the rest of... 

Last week, Rosita Salvador Mubiango breathed her last in a rural southern Mozambican hospital where she had been admitted for weeks, her young life cruelly snuffed out by a blood disorder she had... 

They say death and taxes are the only certainties in life. For me – and a growing number of others – a third now definitely applies: I will never be allowed into the US, which has made it clear... 

Dear Africa in 2030, I write to you from the tail end of 2025, a year marked by restlessness – from Gen Z protests to fraught elections and a coup in Guinea-Bissau only days before the time of... 

A few months back, I wrote in this column about insurgents holding boardroom veto power over development projects in Africa, referencing, among others, TotalEnergies’ $20-billion liquefied natural... 

There is more in common between Cameroon and Cote d’Ivoire than their shared history as former French colonies: they are led by elderly men who just don’t want to leave power, and both secured new... 

Over the next two days, Johannesburg will play host to the 2025 G20 Leaders’ Summit, which US President Donald Trump has announced he will boycott, calling it a “total disgrace” over his unproven... 

Wole Soyinka needs no introduction in Africa – or shouldn’t. The legendary writer, poet and activist became the continent’s first Nobel Prize in Literature laureate back in 1986, and generations of... 

Africa is not short of autocrats, but what rarely makes the headlines is that some glossy corporations from the Global North act as their enablers, padding their own bank accounts while propping up...