Elite political culture matters, especially in the context of a unity government. To succeed, party leaders must embrace the politics of collaboration built on trust.
Xi Jinping shakes hands with Chinese construction workers at a Belt and Road Initiative site in Trinidad and Tobago in June 2023.
Frederic Dubray/AFP via Getty Images
Richard Carney, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen
More autocratic governments, growing urbanization and emerging technologies will bolster the spread of Chinese influence around the world, an expert on emerging economies explains.
Joao Lourenco, the President of Angola.
EFE-EPA/Clemens Bilan
The optimism Angolan president João Lourenço’s election generated four years ago has dwindled as electoral promise after another have failed to materialise.
Former Nelson Mandela Bay Mayor Athol Trollip, from the DA, third from left, and his deputy Mongameli Bobani, from the UDM, extreme right, help clean up a street in 2017.
by Werner Hills/Foto24/Gallo Images/Getty Images
South Africa’s political parties would do well to learn from Ireland, where the three largest political parties negotiated a coalition treaty that stipulated mechanisms for conflict resolution.
Residents in a Cape Town suburb queue to vote during previous municipal elections in South Africa.
Foto24/Gallo Images/Getty Images
An open candidate selection process would provide less incentive for the issuance of material benefits to only a few delegates while the constituency is neglected.
East Asian countries have looked up to Japan as a model of success.
With the right leadership, mindset and policies African countries can achieve, even exceed, the growth and development successes of Asian counterparts.
Lesotho’s former Prime Minister Tom Thabane, left, and his successor Moeketsi Majoro, at the latter’s swearing in ceremony at the Royal Palace in Maseru.
Molise Molise/AFP-GettyImages
Moeketsi Majoro’s installation as Prime Minister is welcome. But it does not guarantee much needed political stability in an era of complex coalition politics.
Ugandan protesters call for an end to President Yoweri Museveni’s despotic rule.
Peter Busomoke/AFP via Getty Images
The Rwandan model can’t be replicated easily given that it depends heavily on political dominance and tight, centralised control of patronage networks.
Posters depicting the ANC in happier times.
Reuters/Siphiwe Sibeko
Democracy resulted in a sea change in the governing ANC. In the past, only highly committed idealists joined the party. Today’s splits and factions are about patronage and clientelism.
Chief Research Specialist in Democracy and Citizenship at the Human Science Research Council and a Research Fellow Centre for African Studies, University of the Free State