Ugandan troops are part of the African Union peacekeeping force that was recently accused of sexual violence against women in Somalia. The silence from the international community is shocking - but not surprising. One only needs to look at the activities of presidents Museveni and Kagame in DR Congo and inside their own countries to understand

Zambia suffers from a bloated government. A streamlined government structure will cut wastage and is likely to yield huge savings from salaries, special allowances, and utility allowances. That money is needed for development

Seventeen new targets have been agreed upon as the post-2015 development goals, including migraation. Engagement by the emerging powers on the issue of migration could yield positive results.

What an astonishing show of colonial arrogance! There are certainly many people around the pan-African world who have been similarly mistreated.

The new policy ignores serious systemic challenges within Malawi’s education system. It discourages the use of local languages in favour of English, a fact that has important cultural ramifications. In sum, the policy makers have misdiagnosed the problem and prescribed the wrong medicine

For most of us today, our lives are bound by the laws of the state, or internationally-enforced laws that define terms of trade, sovereign independence, and political involvement.

Ghana seems to have crossed the threshold of moral decency on a dangerous slope towards self-destruction and moral turpitude. It is now a dog-eat-dog society where those in power have abandoned the citizens to the wolves of private aggrandisement. Does the president see this?

Much like Al Qaeda, the Islamic State (ISIS) is made-in-the-USA, an instrument of terror designed to divide and conquer the oil-rich Middle East and to counter Iran’s growing influence in the region.

NGOs give the impression that they are filling the vacuum created by a retreating state. And they are, but their real contribution is that they defuse political anger and dole out as aid or benevolence what people ought to have by right. They alter the public psyche.

Controlling seed means controlling food production. Africans must choose how they farm. They must not become perpetually indebted to a predatory, profit-driven agricultural-industrial complex.

ISIS beheadings have provoked instinctive revulsion, justly so. Too bad the same reaction doesn’t follow America’s equally barbaric continuation of the death penalty, a habit other civilized nations have abandoned.

Some 2.9 people are threatened with starvation, but this alarming situation has not received any significant attention. Global focus is on the US-led war against al Shabaab militants and the quiet oil exploration by Western firms

The serious allegations of tax fraud made against the publisher of a Zambian newspaper implicate a number of top ranking government officials and institutions, starting with President Michael Sata. These too should be held to account if there is full commitment to fighting corruption in Zambia

A vote for Scottish independence will be a vote against the inequality and all that the British state represents. However, independence, in reality, will bring little change for the poor and working class.

Scramble for fighter jets, panic among law enforcement agencies and the rush to introduce new legislation have been the order of the day for Western authorities in reaction to militant Islam since September 11, 2001. But these strategies are counter-productive as they are not based on a keen understanding of the spreading radicalism in the Muslim world

Nigerian security forces have killed as many people as the militant group Boko Haram in the ongoing war against terror. What must be appreciated is that Boko Haram is a symptom of serious economic and social problems and an indication of the level of despair that many poor people feel. Military force alone will not quash the insurgency

Entitlement, fledgling institutions and a lack of accountability have yielded rampant corruption in the world’s youngest country, South Sudan

President Uhuru Kenyatta recently caused a national stir by appearing in public donning military uniform, something not done by any of his three predecessors. This comes at a time when there is evidence of growing militarization of the state in Kenya.

South Africa urgently requires practical agrarian reform policies that transfer land to black farmers who can use it productively to sustain their livelihoods and to supply markets.

Universities in South Africa and the rest of the continent have tended to either remain aloof from society or follow government prescriptions dociley. Neither of these positions allows for these institutions to contribute to the democratic formation and critical capacity of the societies in which they exist. Universities need to assume a position of ‘embedded autonomy’ while enacting, within their own structures, the democratic values and practices which they teach