The demographic case is equally striking. More than 60% of Africans are under 25. By 2050, one in three people aged 15 to 24 anywhere on Earth will be African. A continent this young is not a problem to be managed. It is a generation to be partnered with
The French president’s visit to Nairobi was a spectacular flop that exposed the tension between African agency and Western entitlement
Africa Day is generally marked as a day for celebration, a day to rejoice at the steps taken by previous generations to fight against and eliminate the effects of colonialism, slavery, land dispossession and to chart a new course for a prosperous Africa.
Twenty-five years after Nepad, there is an urgency to act on what its founding fathers envisaged for the continent’s renewal
SA citizens are not xenophobic for demanding lawful migration, secure borders and fair access to limited opportunities
Budgets are rewritten in Washington and Brussels rather than in Harare, Accra or Nairobi
What has prevented most African countries from performing as well as Japan, Indonesia, Malaysia and Vietnam in economic modernisation is connected with the continent’s ‘soft Westernisation’, focused mainly on appearance
Nations that escaped colonial domination find themselves surrendering economic sovereignty to creditors, ratings agencies and technocrats miles away. This is remote-controlled neocolonialism without the geography
The policy must be remodelled to become broad-based, helping make community organisations and social enterprises its core beneficiaries rather than political elites and their connections
The challenge about the pace of implementing change in the legal sector represents more than a dispute playing out in the high court
The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is drifting towards a dangerous precipice and far too few seem willing to acknowledge it. By arming violent militias, the government in Kinshasa is setting the country on a path that bears an unsettling resemblance to Sudan’s recent history. Anyone concerned with stability in the Great Lakes region should […]
Liberal democracy contains a structural problem that its defenders rarely acknowledge. It is a procedural system for organising competition. It legitimises decision-making through votes, allocates power through representation and constrains its exercise through institutions
The three Sahelian countries — Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger — which have experienced military coups, have not been able to contain the growing episodes of terrorism they have experienced for many year
The virus takes its name from the Ebola River, near the site of one of the first recorded outbreaks in what is now the DRC, in 1976. Four of these six species are known to cause disease in humans and the major African outbreaks have been linked mainly to Zaire, Sudan and Bundibugyo ebolaviruses
The Embassy of the Russian Federation has taken note of the opinion piece published in the Mail & Guardian on 19 May 2026, authored by Mr. Wellington Muzengeza, titled “Africa’s new information war: The leaked files that expose a manufactured solidarity.” We consider this publication a poorly disguised attempt to cast a shadow over the […]
South Africa’s infrastructure ambitions are not constrained by a lack of capital; rather, they are adversely affected by a lack of bankable opportunities.
Whatever Macron’s scream was — the decibel, the disaffection, the outrance — it carried a message: Africa will have to learn to speak with one voice if it is to shape, rather than merely receive, the terms on which trade and investment are conducted
A cache of leaked documents has exposed a sprawling foreign influence network operating across 34 African countries, revealing how Africa’s political space is being quietly reshaped through disinformation, elite capture and engineered narratives. The revelations force a reckoning with the continent’s own vulnerabilities and with the manufactured solidarities that have seduced parts of Africa’s political […]
African fintech is tied to the continent’s underlying financial realities, because solving those challenges is where many of the sector’s largest opportunities still sit.
The Bold Ideas for Brighter Futures Conference, convening in Cape Town from 18 to 20 May, attempts to respond to the risks facing young people, but more importantly to listen to them and share possible solutions
Cutting corners while balancing construction pressure and tight deadlines can be fatal
Our private and political lives are always punctuated by upheavals and storms. These moments signal the direction we should take. The unfolding political and economic crisis in South Africa presents a rich opportunity to chart a revolutionary path that could alter the future. We dare not miss this opening for a moral resetting of our […]
Ramaphosa’s decision to pursue a judicial review and the Constitutional Court’s call for Parliament to start an impeachment inquiry, will create tensions in the GNU
When decisions that have been made repeatedly over decades are not implemented, ecosystems pay the price. The ecological site is a case study in that gap between intention and action and in how quickly ecological thresholds can be crossed
The country’s debt-heavy budget leaves Peter Mutharika, beginning
his second term after winning the September 2025 election, reliant on World Bank-backed reforms to restore investor confidence
Honouring the victims of World War II by putting the world on the verge of World War III is insanity
The journey from a solitary representative in 1934 to unprecedented representation in 2026 is a measure of the continent’s long but undeniable march towards footballing recognition
It is also true that undocumented migration can create space for criminal activity. But we have to be honest: immigrants are not the main drivers of crime in this country. Data from the department of Correctional Services shows that foreign nationals make up around 11% to 14% of inmates, while South Africans make up the majority. So the idea that crime is mainly caused by immigrants is simply not true
At the start of 2026, four of South Africa’s five largest banks were simultaneously pursuing acquisition targets in Kenya. Understanding why this convergence is happening, and what it means beyond the deal announcements, matters for anyone tracking the direction of African financial services. The structural case for Kenya Kenya’s appeal as an anchor market for […]
The Dangote refinery in Nigeria offers a reminder that African ambition can materialise when the enabling environment and project size meet. AfCFTA’s promise is to replicate Dangote-like transformative industries across the continent across multiple sectors.
African agriculture is entering a period where resilience will be determined heavily by access to capital and the ability to remain operational under unstable conditions that may persist for extended periods
Energy insecurity turns treatable illness into financial crisis. Health resilience depends on energy sovereignty. Health systems cannot function reliably when they depend on volatile global fuel markets.