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...
Oil industry is ready to help end violence in Mozambique
I won’t sugar-coat it: The situation in Mozambique’s northern Cabo Delgado province is dire. Armed conflicts between security forces and the militant Islamic group, Ahlu Sunnah Wa-Jamo (ASWJ), known locally as “al-Shabab” even though it has no connections to the Somali group with that name, have left dozens of people...
In bizarre American drama, fiction preserves systemic structures of imbalance
Fiction is a useful currency in the stories we tell ourselves. In the arts especially, fiction is fundamental to awakening universal, human truths – be it your favourite prestige TV thriller, the dystopias of Ray Bradbury’s imagination or one of the countless parodies posted on TikTok every day. In real...
Africa’s oil and gas should power creation of good jobs on the continent
For decades, many of Africa’s oil- and gas-producing countries have followed a predictable pattern. They treated their oil and gas primarily as raw materials that is sold abroad for quick profit rather than as a means of supporting changes in the economy of the nation as a whole. This pattern...
US bans Communist students with military link, says they steal billions of dollars
The US government has finally issued an official policy on the inadmissibility of foreigners affiliated with Communist or totalitarian parties. The critical new rule appears to be the Trump administration’s response to an epidemic of Communists, mainly from China, that have stolen billions of dollars in taxpayer-funded scientific research while...
Men have to stand up as allies of women at work
Men who thought the Covid-19 “she-cession” was misnamed should take a look at the recent figures from the US Bureau of Labour Statistics. After disproportionately losing jobs during the early shutdown, women are now leaving the workforce at nearly four times the rate of men. With so many women laid...
