Long reads on African history, governance, economics, culture, and what comes next.
African sovereign Eurobond issuance recovered substantially in 2024 after the 2022–2023 drought, with Côte d'Ivoire, Benin, Kenya, and Senegal returning to international capital markets. The yield curve that …
The African Continental Free Trade Area entered force on 1 January 2021. The launch narrative — a single market of 1.3 billion people, $3.4 trillion in combined GDP, …
The Zimbabwe Revenue Authority (ZIMRA) operates the import-tariff regime that interacts with the Grain Marketing Board (GMB) state-monopoly framework to determine the effective price of maize at Zimbabwean …
In August 2019 the Buhari administration closed Nigeria's land borders with Benin, Niger, Cameroon, and Chad. The closures lasted, formally, until December 2020 — though the easing was …
The Sokoto Caliphate, established by the Fulani jihad of Usman dan Fodio between 1804 and 1809, was at its peak the largest African polity south of the Sahara …
On 26 July 2023 the Niger Presidential Guard detained Mohamed Bazoum and announced the Conseil National pour la Sauvegarde de la Patrie. ECOWAS responded with the most aggressive …
Moussa Faki Mahamat completed his second four-year term as African Union Commission Chairperson in March 2025, after eight years that included the formal AfCFTA launch, the Common African …
Two regional intellectual-property organisations cover most of the African continent. The Organisation Africaine de la Propriété Intellectuelle (OAPI) covers 17 mostly francophone states. The African Regional Intellectual Property …
Ghana's Community-based Health Planning and Services (CHPS) programme, launched as a national policy in 1999 after the Navrongo pilot work in the late 1990s, is the principal mechanism …
In 2011 the Moroccan constitution made Tamazight — the umbrella name for Berber/Amazigh languages — an official language alongside Arabic. In 2016 the Algerian constitution did the same. …
On 30 October 2024 the Botswana Democratic Party, in power since the country's independence in September 1966, lost the general election. Duma Boko's Umbrella for Democratic Change (UDC) …
The Bantustans — Transkei, Bophuthatswana, Venda, Ciskei, and six other 'self-governing' territories — were the apartheid regime's attempt to resolve a structural contradiction. South Africa needed cheap Black …