The pan-African magazine of choice since 2009
Africa sent 10 teams to this year’s World Cup and nine advanced to the knockout stage. The continent’s impressive run is inspiring international fans, especially people of African descent in the United States and elsewhere. Ken Makin reports. Soccer was the furthest thing from Ed Owusu’s mind when he moved from Ghana to the U.S. …
After three years of civil war, Sudan is facing the most severe humanitarian crisis in the world, with millions at risk of starvation or famine. The capital, Khartoum, has been razed and is largely uninhabitable, and control of the country is split between the army, which governs Khartoum and the eastern regions, and the paramilitary …
Deceptive job schemes and transnational networks are drawing Africans into Vladimir Putin’s war against Ukraine. Kenya, which estimates that over 1,000 of its citizens are involved in the fighting, has adopted a robust strategy to combat the recruitment of its citizens by Russian forces. Recruitment agents often make unrealistic promises to desperate Africans seeking better …
Russia lures Africans into its war against Ukraine Read More »
Two months prior to the local and legislative elections in late May, the Guinean government dissolved all but the smallest opposition parties. This move represents a step towards authoritarian consolidation that, paradoxically, reveals the very insecurity the regime strives to hide. It also contradicts any optimistic interpretation of Mamadi Doumbouya’s recent attempt to gain legitimacy …
Afrobeat pioneer Fela Anikulapo Kuti was already outspoken about conditions under Nigeria’s military regime, but his 1976 song “Zombie” took it to a new level, lambasting the government’s minions with lyrics like “zombie no go think, unless you tell ’em to think,” over one of his trademark Africanized James Brown grooves. The junta responded by …
In recent weeks, African countries including Ghana and Nigeria have sent aircraft to bring their nationals home from South Africa – an action they deemed necessary due to the hostility and occasional violence that migrants from other African nations have been experiencing there. The anti-immigrant movement among South Africans seems to have forgotten that their …
Gold-producing nations in West Africa are racing to build gold refineries. Guinea’s Nimba Gold Refinery is expected to open in July. Mines Minister Bouna Sylla says the country retains less than 1% of the revenue from the $7 billion worth of gold it mines in a year. And the new refinery would change that. Guinea …
(Published August 2014) Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, who ran for president of Ghana in 2008 and 2012 on the ticket of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), is seeking to lead his party for the third time, in the 2016 elections. Akufo-Addo says his chances of bearing the NPP flag again are very bright. “I am …
Ghana: Akufo-Addo sure of becoming third time lucky Read More »
South Africa’s nuclear regulator said Thursday that no radioactive material leaked into the environment during three recent “contamination” events inside Africa’s only nuclear power station. The incidents involved “elevated airborne radioactive contamination” inside the Koeberg Power Station, on South Africa’s west coast, when there was a loss of power to ventilation units during maintenance work, the National Nuclear Regulator …
Guy Scott, the Zambian politician who briefly served as acting president to become Africa’s first white head of state in more than two decades, died on July 15, the Zambian government said. He was 82. Scott was Zambia’s vice president and stood in as president of the southern African country for three months when Michael Sata died in office in 2014. …