Angola’s oil and gas industry can thrive alongside its rich biodiversity
Angola was last month said to be drafting legislation to permit prospection of oil, gas and mining activities in 14 national conservation areas. These are the Luengue-Luiana National Park, which represents part of the Kavango-Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area that stretches from Angola, Namibia, Botswana, Zambia to Zimbabwe. The announcement led...
It’s time Trump learnt what happens when the law stops being polite and gets real
This week, we start the second impeachment trial of Donald J. Trump. For those of you who have been sent here by a family member trying to save you from Newsmax, here’s a quick recap of how we got here: After losing his bid for re-election, Trump spent two-and-a-half months...
Spike in the number of scientists studying Covid awes researchers
For many researchers, the choice to spend decades working in a lab or in the field comes from a desire to help – to expand understanding of how life works or to improve human health. So, when Covid-19 emerged, many scientists dropped what they were doing and switched their focus...
In digital age, there is real need to protect the rights of Black and brown people
As an early member of the Black Lives Matter Global Network in the Bay Area, I was among the leaders responsible for managing several BLM Facebook pages and I witnessed the inequity first hand. I spent hours each day from 2014 until 2017 removing violent racial and gendered harassment, explicitly...
Banning White supremacism is not censorship, it is accountability
Early last month, in the wake of the fatal incursion of an angry, mostly white and male mob into the Capitol Building in Washington, DC, Facebook and Twitter blocked Donald Trump’s accounts. YouTube followed with a temporary ban, which it has continued to extend in the weeks since. According to...
With just one horrific act, Kenya faces a nightmare she’s never dared imagine
For so long, Kenyan leaders have conditioned the populace to accept corruption. A collective state of mind exists in which the ordinary Kenyan has come to expect America, Europe and other foreigners to solve his pressing problems through all forms of aid. Call it a tragic dependency syndrome. The ordinary...
What is Africa’s gift to humanity in terms of democracy, science, law?
After the end of the cold-war, Washington and Brussels lauded Africa’s burgeoning democracy. And direct foreign investments poured into Africa. But things have changed. As you read this, Kenya’s is in the throes of a constitutional amendment. It is obvious the governing elite want to succeed itself. Two weeks ago,...
Patients with lingering symptoms need access to specialised clinics
Those of us who try to prepare communities for outbreaks of infectious diseases have a saying: Once you’ve seen one pandemic, you’ve seen one pandemic. In other words, each deadly outbreak is different and brings with it, new challenges. As members of a team that helps the nation’s largest public...
Government is neither slavery or freedom: It’s a system that rules beings
Government is neither slavery or freedom; it is a system invented or created to rule human beings by human beings If you have no rules, then someone or somebody has to create them, and then have methods of teaching them and enforcing them and changing them, whether that be physically...
Election of a black president created violent backlash we’re witnessing in the US
Watching the storming of the Capitol last week, many progressive critics of American foreign policy concluded that the country’s chickens were finally coming home to roost. This was the blowback from America’s many military interventions, forever wars and coup attempts. Regime change had returned to Washington. For these critics, the...
