East
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Moving the Talai: How the British tried, and failed, to eliminate the native prophets of the Rift Valley
The evidence of colonial Britain’s attempt to eliminate the Talai a century ago is only now coming to light, as the last of the ... -
Rwanda: The eternal sunshine of the spotless election
Kagame’s latest electoral victory is testimony to the impressive work of the electoral commission in moulding the numbers to fit predetermined results. At the ... -
A story within a story: The making and unmaking of Ethiopia’s imperial messiah
This unauthorised biography of Abiy Ahmed is a nuanced, unsparing examination of a leader trying to hold together a republic being undone by its ... -
Debt and the Gen Z protests: The moral economy of the African crowd
A generation after the 1980s debt crisis triggered the rebirth of democracy on the continent, will Kenya’s youthful idealists spark a pan-African revolt? The ... -
Mkuki Bgoya: “Swahili writers should be mandatory reading in Tanzania, but there’s a deep trauma around books”
Abdulrazak Gurnah, the Zanzibari-born 2021 Nobel Literature laureate’s grand homecoming was punctuated by the translation of his masterpiece, Paradise, into Kiswahili. His publisher, Mkuki ... -
Cairo’s Faustian bargain with Brussels sends Sudanese refugees back into the cauldron
The third deal the EU is signing with a ‘partner’ state since 2016, a cash-strapped Egypt did not hesitate to justify Europe’s immigration paranoias ... -
Eritrea at 33: Exporting internal strife, navigating regional tensions and steadily looking East
More than a generation since it won its hard-fought independence, Eritrea is synonymous with Isaias Afwerki. For better. Or for worse. As Eritrea marked ... -
“The roof does all the work”: The rise of green roofs in Nairobi
Planting vegetation on buildings can bring many perks for those that can afford them, but the environmental benefits should not be overstated. The apartment ... -
In Abiy’s Ethiopia, 200 journalists have been arrested since 2019
The Nobel laureate won plaudits early on for releasing imprisoned journalists. Today, his government depicts journalists as spies and traitors, and is accused of ... -
“After the dam, nothing is good”: How Ethiopia’s mega project devastated centuries of survival strategies
Until recently, indigenous groups in the Omo Valley planted crops, foraged, hunted, fished, herded animals, and shared food. Now they face starvation. Over thousands ...
