When multiple electricity companies compete for consumers, there is pressure to keep costs low and to improve service quality.
GettyImages
A decision to merge energy sector agencies could depress investors’ appetite to finance infrastructure expansion.
African countries are still fixated on individual economic interests.
Wikimedia Commons/Flickr
African countries are struggling to implement the African Union’s protocol on free movement four years after its ratification.
Getty Images
Some lakes in the DRC should be thought of as rebellious landscapes having their own social, political and cultural dynamics.
Ernest Shonekan.
Source: British High Commission, Abuja/Flickr
Shonekan’s enduring legacy is in the business world and not the political arena where he remains a footnote in Nigeria’s history.
Fishermen weigh a basket full of fish off the Indian ocean’s archipelago of Lamu on Kenya’s coast.
Tony Karumba/AFP via Getty Images
COVID-19 greatly disrupted local market dynamics at landing sites, within the communities, and connections to more distant markets.
Fast food in Ghana is expensive.
Wikimedia Commons/Flickr/Marco Verch
Fast food brands target high- and middle-income groups who have incomes to adopt so-called modern lifestyles, including consuming fast food regularly.
Ugandan strongman General Idi Amin raised the national profile of Uganda Nubians – but they were persecuted soon after his overthrow in 1979.
Photo by Keystone/Getty Images
There is more to ethnic identity than ancestral location or settlement pattern, language or family history.
Women carry water buckets filled with water after fetching it from one of the illegal freshwater points in Mathare slum.
EPA-EFE/Daniel Irungu
Fetching water entails physical hardship that can often lead to mental agony and can sometimes even threaten a woman’s safety.
African-owned food retailers are increasing their footprints across the continent.
FG TRADE/Getty Images
Commitments made on the global stage must now be followed through with policy and regulatory reform at national, regional and continental levels.
Colonel Assimi Goita has stepped back from undertakings that there would be a return to civilian rule soon.
Photo by Habib Kouyate/Xinhua via Getty
Rising tensions in West Africa heighten as the military junta in Mali engages Wagner, a Russian private military company while defying ECOWAS.
Kwame Nkrumah favoured continental federalism but worked against its practice in Ghana.
Wikimedia Commons
Ghana lost its federalism due to mistaken political choices and missed opportunities, suggesting that other federations in Africa might well be at similar risk.
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa addresses a meeting of the SACP in 2015.
GCIS: Flickr
The resort to armed struggle brought the Communist Party and the African National Congress much closer together during their time in exile.
Tasting coffee at the Good African Coffee company’s factory, in Kampala, Uganda.
Photo by Jonathan Torgovnik/Getty Images
The experiences of all past successful late industrialisers tell us that experimentation with policies resulted in better outcomes.
An aerial view of members of the Herero and Nama communities taking part in the Reparation Walk in 2019.
Christian Ender/Getty Images
The problem is that communities who continue to be most affected by the violent past have not been involved in negotiations.
Women line up to collect water in their buckets in the informal settlement of Kibera in Nairobi.
Photo by Wendy Stone/Corbis via Getty Images
The manner in which people access water differs according to income. People in high- and middle- income areas tend to have piped connections in their homes.
Flooding remains a challenge in some Nigerian cities.
Sodiq Adelakun/AFP via Getty Images
Institutional failures, infrastructure, socio-economic challenges and disaster education influence Nigerian cities’ vulnerability to flood disaster.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Senegalese Foreign Minister Aissata Tall Sall in Dakar, Senegal.
Photo by Andrew Harnik /pool/AFP/via Getty Images
African countries should adopt measures that strategically play rivals against each other. They should implement long-term strategies and domestic policies for dealing with strategic partners.
Deputy Chief Justice Raymond Zondo has delivered his first report on state capture to South African president Cyril Ramaphosa.
Photo by Veli Nhlapo/Sowetan/Gallo Images via Getty Images
The inquiry’s findings could be a defining moment for South Africa, but only if the work of the Commission leads to concrete action and systemic change.
Photo by Ben Hasty/MediaNews Group/Reading Eagle via Getty Images
Academics reflect on books on topical issues in Nigeria that they read in 2021.
Looters rampage through a shopping centre in the city of Durban during lawlessness triggered by the arrest of former president Jacob Zuma.
EFE-EPA/Stringer
The evidence shows that political risk in South Africa has increased markedly in certain areas over the past two decades.
A delegate gets accredited during the last All Progressives Congress presidential primary.
Pius Utomi Ekpei/AFP via Getty Images
Nigeria’s legislators have no constitutional right to force political parties to adopt direct primaries.
A new US report claims that China plans to open new military bases across Africa.
Getty Images
Foreign military presence is not very pronounced in Kenya, though British and American personnel either train or assist in security operations.
Zanzibar’s anti-riot police officers stand guard over protesters cornered during opposition protests in Stone Town, Zanzibar.
Photo by Marco Longari/AFP via Getty Images
The emerging partisan politics and the polarisation it creates is a new threat for Tanzania.
Eskom has alleged that recent incidents at its power stations were sabotage.
Mujahid Safodien/AFP via Getty Images
Attacks on national power generation’s critical infrastructure are a known strategy of hybrid warfare.
Abstention in the 2021 local government election was largely driven by a combination of individual and administrative barriers.
Guillem Sartorio/AFP via Getty Images
The South African electorate is becoming less tied to race and identity-based voting but are increasingly making a wider evaluation of the performance of political incumbents.