Frantz Fanon (1925-1961) was born in Martinique. He joined the Free French Army and fought in Europe during World War II. After the war he studied psychiatry and philosophy in France until being assigned to a psychiatric hospital in Algeria

Read the rest of Frantz Fanon’s Afterlife: On the 50th Anniversary of His Death – By Michael Keating »

Last week, the Supreme Court in the Democratic Republic of Congo upheld the result of what was by all accounts a deeply flawed election, marred by widespread irregularities, violent incidents, and reports of fraud. Despite calls from the international community

Read the rest of DR Congo: The International Community Must Not Turn Their Backs On Democracy – By William Townsend, Free Fair DRC »

Just two years after the Sahel faced a major food crisis, leaving an estimated seven million people in need of food aid in Niger and Chad, the alarm bell has sounded again. Following poor and erratic rains in the 2011

Read the rest of Food Crisis in the Sahel – a region in need of long term solutions – By Celeste Hicks »

African Arguments writer Theodore Trefon has a new analysis piece on the BBC website: Democratic Republic of Congo President Joseph Kabila’s victory in the 28 November election is fragile and contested. His swearing-in ceremony is scheduled for Tuesday. But main

Read the rest of BBC Analysis: DR Congo elections open new wounds – By Theodore Trefon »

Despite his African heritage Barack Obama appears to have done little for his father’s continent in his first term as US president. He could not match George Bush’s generous legacy of millions of dollars poured in into health in Africa.

Read the rest of Obama and Africa: an African second term? – By Richard Dowden »

Africa’s political plates are shifting. In concert with economic gains realised over the course of the past decade in particular, and the concomitant rise in a more connected, and increasingly more empowered populace, political stability (or at least constructive change)

Read the rest of African Election Map 2011 – 2012 – By Simon Freemantle, Standard Bank »

In December 2011 two new groups claimed responsibility for kidnaps in northwest Africa. On 7 December, the Mauritanian ANI news agency said it had received a video from a group called ‘al-Qaeda in Nigeria’, showing a British engineer kidnapped on

Read the rest of Northwest Africa kidnap claims by new groups suggest growing competition for ransoms – By Exclusive Analysis »

In 2009 I screened the film Pray the Devil Back to Hell in Monrovia, Liberia, with a group of Liberian women — young and old — and found myself buoyed by an unconventional story portraying unconventional women in very unconventional

Read the rest of ‘Pray the Devil Back to Hell’ and the making of Leymah Gbowee, Nobel Laureate – By Robtel Neajai Pailey »

For sub-Saharan governments one largely unmentioned reaction to the fall of Libya’s Colonel Qadhafi earlier this year was their surprise at the scale of the country’s offshore sovereign wealth funds – now at the disposal of the Transitional National Council

Read the rest of African sovereign wealth funds prospects – by Jolyon Ford, Oxford Analytica. »

“I’ve given up on being negative – there are too many things to save, and too many important things to do,” says Jonathan Ledgard – a foreign correspondent and author whose work has been compared with that of the German

Read the rest of “If Somalia fails, it will fail like a Catherine Wheel” – in conversation with Jonathan Ledgard, author of ‘Submergence’ – By Magnus Taylor »