Long reads on African history, governance, economics, culture, and what comes next.
The Pan-African Payment and Settlement System (PAPSS) launched operationally in January 2022 under the African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank) as the settlement layer for the AfCFTA. PAPSS is designed …
Egypt's IT outsourcing sector has, over the last fifteen years, grown into the largest English-and-French-language technology services export base in the Arab-speaking and African worlds. The Information Technology …
The African Development Bank's Desert to Power initiative, announced in 2018 with a target of 10 GW of solar generation across the Sahel by 2030, has been one …
Charles Soludo, as Central Bank of Nigeria governor from 2004 to 2009, executed the most consequential structural reform of Nigerian banking since independence: the 2005 recapitalization mandate raising …
The Climate-Smart Agriculture (CSA) framework — formally adopted by the FAO in 2010 and now embedded in the African Union's Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) Malabo Declaration …
Flutterwave's legal-and-corporate structure is more complex than the press framing of the company as a 'Nigerian fintech' suggests. The Mauritius-domiciled Flutterwave Inc. is the parent holding entity; the …
The Mombasa–Nairobi Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) opened in June 2017 — the largest single infrastructure investment in Kenya's post-independence history at USD 3.2 billion, financed approximately 90% by …
African startup venture funding peaked in 2022 at roughly USD 4.8 billion in disclosed deals (Big Four total: Nigeria, Kenya, Egypt, South Africa), per Briter Bridges and the …
Kwame Nkrumah's *I Speak of Freedom* (1961) opens with a wager: that the only way the newly independent African states would resist becoming neocolonial dependencies of their former …
Patrice Lumumba, first Prime Minister of the independent Congo, was assassinated on 17 January 1961 in Élisabethville (now Lubumbashi), three months after his October 1960 dismissal by President …
The M23 (Mouvement du 23 mars) insurgency in eastern DRC, dormant from 2013 to 2021 and reactivated since November 2021, has captured most of Rutshuru and Masisi territories …
The Kenyan mobile-money sector, dominated by M-Pesa, has reached structural saturation. GSMA Mobile Money State of the Industry data for 2024 show Kenya at over 85% adult registered-account …