The Mail & Guardian prides itself on its coverage of the African continent. These are some of the best stories – all first-hand, on-the-ground reporting – to appear in the paper’s Africa section this year.
You probably don’t know much about Rwanda. Gorillas. Genocide. Don Cheadle. But it’s time to start learning, because ‘the Rwanda Model’ will soon be coming to a country near you. So what exactly does this model look like? And why should we be worried?
When First Lady Grace Mugabe seized the farmland around Mazowe Dam, the people who lived and worked there were brutally kicked off the land. Just days after President Robert Mugabe’s resignation, the people came back.
There is no government in the CAR. There is no state. So what does 21st-century anarchy look like? The M&G travelled to Batangafo, a small town in the north-west, to find out. It wasn’t pretty.
As the politicians bicker in Kinshasa, the political crisis in the Democratic Republic of Congo is silently suffocating its citizens. In rural Equateur Province, things are slowly falling apart, and it’s not clear that anyone can put them back together.
On election day, the opposition stronghold of Kisumu is a ghost town. So why is there a body lying in the middle of the road, and how did it get there? And why is the phalanx of riot police ignoring it?
This painstaking investigation into how South Sudan’s ruling elite have stolen and squandered the country’s reserves of foreign currency is an extraordinary insight into the mechanics of looting on a grand, almost unimaginable scale.
The Central African Republic’s National Museum is in tatters. The roof leaks, the walls are crumbling, and the exhibits are rotting in their wooden coffins. Can Director Abel Kotton save what’s left of the country’s heritage?
Dying from the plague in Madagascar is like dying twice: first in this life; and then, because bodies must be burned to prevent further infection, dying again in the afterlife. That’s why this outbreak of the pneumonic plague has been so difficult to contain.
Ernest – not his real name – runs a small but respected political news site. He also runs several lucrative ‘fake news’ sites. Like a Robin Hood for the digital age, he uses the fake news to pay for the real news.
Kenya’s 2017 elections were far from perfect. But those with long enough memories can remember Kenya’s first-ever multi-party election in 1992, and appreciate just how far Kenya has come since then.