News Analysis

Kenyan opposition leader Raila Odinga and his coalition party, Azimio la Umoja-One Kenya called for mass protests across the country on March 20, marking the beginning of violent expression of disconcert with the government failure or inability to rein in high cost and galloping inflation. Odinga and his team have...

The literally unprecedented indictment against Donald Trump marks an outright dangerous – and politically fraught – moment for the United States and serves as a reminder of the unparalleled level of criminality and conspiracy that surrounded the 2016 election. It’s easy to look back at the 2016 election as though...

In areas where al Shabaab has not been able to penetrate the locality to establish a threat of violence, its extortion practices are less successful. Businessmen operating solely within Baidoa and Kismayo, for example, have reported rebuffing al Shabaab demands for payment without fear of retribution. This has coincided with...

Cutting off al Shabaab’s estimated $100 million in extortion-generated annual revenue will require restoring the integrity of Somalia’s compromised financial, judicial and intelligence agencies. Despite setbacks, al Shabaab remains a resilient and destabilising threat in Somalia. In the past year, it was linked to 2,553 violent events and 6,225 fatalities....

When long-serving, neo-patrimonial leaders in Burkina Faso, Gambia, Zimbabwe and Sudan were forced to step down because of popular and youthful protests in recent years, the era of “presidents for life” in Africa seemed to be ending. Yet, for every such leader who has been forced from power, new ones...

In 2014 Ukraine’s “revolution of dignity” culminated in the ouster of a Russian-friendly president, Viktor Yanukovych, and this created fear in Moscow. For Russian President Vladimir Putin the revolt in Ukraine hit too close to home. He reacted by annexing Crimea (after a referendum that violated Ukraine’s constitution), while working...