President of Angola Joao Lourenco in Berlin, Germany in 2018. The powers of the president remain intact.
Photo by Abdulhamid Hosbas/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
Frustration is growing among opposition supporters who believe the last election was stolen.
A worker carries a water container at a newly installed internally displaced person camp in Mekele, the capital of Tigray region, Ethiopia.
Photo by Yasuyoshi Chiba/AFP via Getty Images
Africa needs to embrace a new approach that focuses on what countries in an embattled region – as a ‘community’ of regional states – can do to intervene.
Tanzania opposition party leader Freeman Mbowe (centre) after being released from prison in Dar es Salaam in 2020.
Photo by Ericky Boniphace/AFP via Getty Images
Despite the relative political stability over the years, Tanzania needs a new constitution to address contemporary challenges and strengthen institutions.
South African Defence Force troops on patrol in Alexandra, Johannesburg, following recent violence and looting.
EFE-EPA/Kim Ludbrook
The violence wreaked its damage because South Africa’s journey to democracy remains incomplete. It sends a sharp message that the country must look its past far more squarely in the eye.
Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed arrives to cast his vote during the country’s parliamentary elections in Beshasha, Oromia, in June.
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The disturbance in Ghana’s parliament during the election of a speaker has raised questions about its current democratic system.
Protestors burnt trucks on the main road between the city port Durban in KwaZulu-Natal and South Africa’s industrial heartland.
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The glaring failure by authorities to secure an area notorious for attacks on trucks prompts questions about, at best, utter ineptitude, or at worst, complicity.
Police enter a flooded mall that had been ransacked .
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An uncomfortable reality is that looting is perceived by the looters to be socially acceptable and is often encouraged and endorsed within social and community networks.
Looters grab items from a vandalised mall in South Africa.
Photo by Marco Longari/AFP via Getty Images
South Africa can’t possibly remain the same country in the aftermath of this mayhem. There are just too many storms ahead to simply continue unchanged.
King Mswati III of eSwatini, Africa’s last absolute monarch, is facing growing demands for democracy and rule of law.
EPA-EFE/Yeshiel Panchia
There is more support for democracy among African people than is often recognised. Yet this can be undermined by election rigging and is lower in countries like Lesotho, Mozambique and South Africa.
Catholics in Lagos protest against the incessant killings in Benue state.
Adekunle Ajayi/NurPhoto via Getty Images
At the centre of the persisting violence in the north-central region of Nigeria is bad governance.
People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) supporters at a campaign rally. The party has run the country since independence in 1975.
Photo by Osvaldo Silva / AFP) via Getty Images.
Angola needs a mixed electoral system. This would promote accountability through the direct election of representatives from constituencies.
Supporters of Ethiopian Citizens for Social Justice opposition party rally at Maskel Square in Addis Ababa, on June 16, 2021.
Photo by Yasuyoshi Chiba/AFP via Getty Images
A new government with popular legitimacy will have power to address lingering political, economic and security challenges.
Workers mount a billboard of Ethiopia’s prime minister Abiy Ahmed on the eve of his campaign visit in Jimma.
Photo by Eduardo Soteras/AFP via Getty Images
Ethiopian history shows that the demands of its young people can’t go unaddressed for long.
A convoy of Malian armed forces escorts the vehicle of the country’s coup leader as he returns from a recent ECOWAS summit where Mali was suspended.
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