The territorial ambitions of Ethiopia – or, more accurately, Abyssinia (present-day northern Ethiopia comprising the Tigray and Amhara regions) – are deep-rooted. They emanate from the thinking that ...

In 1989, when he was the deputy speaker of parliament, Kalonzo Musyoka, the former vice president and now an opposition leader, was a man who would not brook criticism of the one-party state under ...

As we close out 2025, we reflect on a year marked by defining moments—significant wins, painful losses, and the passing of respected elders in the public sphere. In this conversation, our guest Zahid ...

We first heard of Alice at a press conference on 19 January 1987, given by Yoweri Museveni, the man then relatively new to the Ugandan presidency. We’d been summoned to State Lodge in Mbale, at the ...

Karura Forest, Nairobi’s iconic urban green haven, has recently become the focus of a management dispute between the Kenya Forest Service (KFS) and Friends of Karura Forest (FKF). The disagreement ...

One topic that has not gained prominence in the climate change discussions is that of land rights and tenure rights, and how all the planned climate action will impact these rights in Africa. With 90 ...

Corruption, however you define it, is so integral to the way human commercial and political affairs play out that all major global developments in its regard have been driven by geopolitical shifts.

In many parts of the world where ethnic balance has not been achieved, politics turn violent. Ethiopia is a classic example where a lack of ethnic balance leads to ethnic violence. The Ethiopian ...

The government has backtracked on a directive that was, ironically, issued by President William Ruto when he was Kenya’s agriculture minister. In 2009, Ruto banned the export of unprocessed macadamia ...

Africa’s post-colonial promise of democratization that began in the 1980s and 1990s with the “second independence” struggles now confronts a defining and painful reckoning. The optimism that ...

It was a landmark case for its time, a first for East Africa and possibly for the continent. A group of Africans challenged a colonial power in a colonial court to appeal a major land grab and demand ...

The Mathare Social Justice Centre (MSJC) office is located off Juja road in Nairobi’s Eastlands. It is situated in a single-storeyed building planted right at the edge of Mathare Valley. The building ...