In the wake of the July 26 coup in Niger, the world’s spotlight has once again turned to the expansion of private military and security companies (PMSCs) across Africa. Following the removal of the relatively pro-Western government, Niger’s new military rulers asked Russian PMSC Wagner to help defend against a possible military intervention by the Economic Community of… Read More Private military companies continue to expand in Africa
Out in the Sahara Desert, in one of the most inhospitable environments imaginable, a natural solution to the climate crisis is growing – and at a rapid rate. London-based startup Brilliant Planet has leased 6,100 hectares of land outside the remote coastal town of Akhfenir in southern Morocco, wedged between the Atlantic Ocean to the… Read More Growing and burying algae in the Sahara is the latest solution for the climate crisis
France has retained a quasi-empire in Africa by stealth, and it is under threat like never before. Nabila Ramdani Retreats from crumbling empires are inevitably characterised by hastily arranged evacuations. Panicked civilians make their way to rickety airport terminals, in the hope of an emergency flight out of the chaos. This was the postcolonial scene… Read More The Niger crisis shows France’s quasi-empire in Africa is finally crumbling
By Edward Carver WHEN HE died unexpectedly in 2020, American anthropologist and left-wing activist David Graeber was best known for his 2011 book Debt: The First 5,000 Years, a revisionist history of money, and his involvement in Occupy Wall Street. He helped coin the catchphrase “We are the 99 percent.” But before he became a swashbuckling public… Read More Pirates + Madagascar = Egalitarian Utopia? David Graeber’s “Pirate Enlightenment”
By Anna Turns On 14 July 1960, 26-year-old Jane Goodall arrived by boat to the shores of Lake Tanganyika, Tanzania. Here, in what is now Gombe Stream National Park, her ground-breaking scientific research into chimpanzee behaviour began. The photo of Jane Goodall with infant chimp Flint (Credit: Hugo van Lawick) Previously a secretarial student without… Read More The human-chimp bond captured in an iconic photo
Adam Tooze This Valentines day, Americans gifted each other in the order of 58 million pounds of chocolate, much of it wrapped in 36 million heart-shaped boxes. It was a particularly busy period for the global chocolate industry, which in 2020 processed c. 5 million tons of cocoa beans into chocolate confectionary, generating around 130 billion dollars… Read More The Closing of the Cocoa Frontier
Her debut album Parakou was released in 1990, but it took her hit song Agolo for her to burst into global reckoning and galvanise the world’s dance floors in 1994. In the Yoruba language “agolo” refers to the metaphysical significance of time, a cyclical phenomenon conjoining life with death – life being a gift that must be cherished and… Read More Angelique Kidjo: the diva from Benin carries with her a fierce history
First posted December 15, 2017 The highest ideals of Locke, Hume and Kant were first proposed more than a century earlier by an Ethiopian in a cave The ideals of the Enlightenment are the basis of our democracies and universities in the 21st century: belief in reason, science, skepticism, secularism, and equality. In fact, no… Read More Dag Herbjørnsrud – The African Enlightenment
openDemocracy’s new film BOOMERANG, exploring the legacies of empire through Liverpool’s docks, is available online Kojo Koram Lenin’s famous quote that “there are weeks where decades happen” would be a suitable epitaph for the tombstone of the Liz Truss premiership. As commentators focus on her obvious personal limitations as a politician to explain her spectacular… Read More Empire not only made the colonies. It made the unequal Britain we see today
Cassie Dummett Villagers in the Congo basin rely on the forest for food, medicine and spiritual wellbeing, but an auction of exploration rights could threaten that way of life West accused of double standards over oil and gas exploration in DRC “I have lived all my life in the forest; everything I do is in… Read More Sale of oil and gas permits casts shadow over world’s second-largest rainforest
After the truth-shower 