I want to tell you about a book that made me deeply uncomfortable, not because it was difficult to read, but because it was easy. I kept expecting the analysis to feel dated, to hit a page where I ...

Elections ordinarily serve two main purposes. One, they facilitate the peaceful change of leaders or the renewal of the mandate of incumbents, which is necessary for their legitimacy regardless of the ...

In this blog post, Lebohang Liepollo Pheko introduces a recently published, open access special issue in The BMJ on reparations and global health. In it, she argues that if the 19th century was the ...

Establishing home both in the legal, communal, and social sense is always an ongoing conversation under the shadow of the state and of history. Dr. Mshai Mwangola talks to Dr. J. K. S. Makokha.

Chinedu Chukwudinma, Christopher J. Lee and Bettina Engels introduce special issue 186, Volume 52 of the journal, dedicated to honouring the centenary of the Martiniquais-Algerian revolutionary Frantz ...

Kenya’s post-independence history is marked by numerous instances of high-ranking politicians and politically connected individuals exploiting state power to illegally acquire public land – what land ...

Micere Githae Mugo is undoubtedly one of Africa’s foremost poets of distinction. Her iconic status as an activist, scholar and creative artist spans the colonial and post-independence era of Kenya’s ...

From politics to law, environment, to social life, Kenyans have had quite a fruitful half-year. What should we keep an eye on? What should we measure? What should we leverage? The Elephant talks to ...

In a Uganda long accustomed to provocative social media flurry from Army Chief General Muhoozi Kainerugaba, two recent developments shocked even the most cynical observers. On the night of 27 June, ...

After three and a half weeks in South Africa and Zimbabwe, returning to the United States feels like stepping out of a vivid, sun-soaked world into a cold landscape of unrelenting gloom, as if the ...

In 1950s apartheid South Africa, visibility was never neutral. To appear publicly as Black, urban, fashionable, and modern carried political meaning in a society built on racial segregation and ...

President Trump’s suspension of all aid to Uganda is the latest contingency that the country failed to foresee and make provision for. Landslides, drought and famine happen so frequently one would ...