Long reads on African history, governance, economics, culture, and what comes next.
In November 2018, John Magufuli's government deployed the Tanzanian People's Defence Force to confiscate roughly 220,000 tonnes of unsold cashew nuts from buyers who had refused to purchase …
The standard European narrative of the Indian Ocean places Vasco da Gama's 1498 arrival at Calicut as the moment the ocean became a connected commercial space. The Indian …
The East African Community's Common External Tariff (CET), revised in 2022 to introduce a fourth tariff band at 35% for finished goods, is the most consequential trade-policy instrument …
Every SADC country except South Africa has run a fertilizer subsidy programme in the last fifteen years. Malawi's Farm Input Subsidy Programme (FISP) is the longest-running and most …
Mediterranean classical scholarship has, for two centuries, treated the eastern Roman frontier as ending at the Sinai and resuming at India. Between those points, the maps tend to …
Mansa Musa I of Mali's 1324-1325 pilgrimage to Mecca has, in recent years, become a viral subject under the framing 'the richest person in history.' The viral version …
ECOWAS leaders adopted, in 2000, a plan for a single West African currency — the *Eco* — to be introduced by 2003. The plan was delayed to 2005, …
The eNaira launched in October 2021 as the first African central bank digital currency (CBDC), positioning Nigeria as a global pioneer alongside Bahamas's Sand Dollar (2020) and ahead …
Bola Tinubu took office in May 2023 inheriting a Naira regime with multiple official rates, a Central Bank of Nigeria parallel-market premium of roughly 60%, and an external …
Lesetja Kganyago, governor of the South African Reserve Bank from November 2014 through his second term ending in 2024 (with the third term commencing under expected continuity), has …
The Igbo apprenticeship system (*Igba-Boi* or *Imu-Ahia*) is the longest-running, largest-scale informal mass entrepreneurship programme in any African economy. A boy or young man (traditionally) is placed with …
Between March 2022 and March 2024, the Egyptian pound, Nigerian naira, and Ghanaian cedi each lost between 45% and 70% of their value against the US dollar in …