After having trailed in the opening round, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva recently secured the Presidency in Brazil’s 2026 elections. Through an interview with Owen MacDonald, Pambazuka seeks to convey not only how the people of Brazil mobilized to secure this victory, but what the victory means for Global Africans and the defeat of imperialism. 

In continuing reflections on the 25th anniversary of the Durban Declaration against racism and discrimination, Nketsiah asks how we should update the declaration in our fight against systemic racism to reflect the technological stage the world has reached. Increasingly faced with algorithms and Artificial Intelligence embedded in governance and control mechanisms, racism and discrimination must be confronted at the technological scale.

As debate rages on whether the ‘Visit Rwanda’ brand is smart marketing for tourism or state sportswashing against destructive acts, Aston Villa has signed a multi-million-dollar agreement with Visit Rwanda, and Formula 1 just announced its return to Africa through its deal with Rwanda. In the context of Kigali’s internal repression and its direct role in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s eastern conflict, Madondo outlines what sportswashing is and how Visit Rwanda’s campaigns exemplify the phenomenon.

Parameswaran questions dominant narratives about Africa’s migration to Europe using the recent migrant crossing into Ceuta and reflects on insights from the road to London Heathrow Airport. 

As we are experiencing a world order in disorder, with war conflagrations and shifting balance of power, Issa Shivji calls for a Sovereign Pan-African Project. The analyses recap the fundamental and nonnegotiable characteristics of Pan-Africanism that should anchor the question of Africa’s position in the emerging multipolar world with competing regional hegemonies.   

From a South African clinic to a Nairobi embassy queue, this essay traces how nation, region and race make Africans foreign to one another and asks what Pan-Africanism owes the stranger.

Pambazuka News takes stock of the victories since WCAR in Durban, the political organising that informed the landmark conference, reparations and the tasks for the next 25 years.

The demands for reparations arose from battles over the dignity of the African descendant, repatriation, self-determination and questions around land, labor education, political power, culture, white supremacy and black racism. Campbell explains the progressive forces forging repair and the cooptation and political expediency of the reactionary elements pushing back the efforts of the working class, women, grassroots and marginalized groups in Jamaica and other parts of Global Africa.

Zionism has discriminatory and racist roots that manifests in its treatment of Palestinians and other races. Elkorghli offers a historicity of the international recognition of the links between racism and zionism, and precedence and Pan-African solidarity for reparative justice.

The Durban site as host to WCAR 2001 was a bold statement that reflected the honour of a country that had gained freedom from a racist, discriminatory, marginalising and violent apartheid regime. The years after Durban present complex local and international events around the country. Khamees interrogates the contradictions in South Africa’s diplomatic posturing and anti-African discrimination and violence against migrants in the country within the 25 years after the Durban Conference.

Serekberhan covers a half-day symposium packed with former Durban attendees, guerilla intellectuals, and the Syracuse community to commemorate 25 years since the Durban Conference. From how Durban was built and functioned to ongoing struggles for reparations in New York state and within the global context, the conference threaded many themes relevant to our fight for reparative justice. 

Imperialist competition and wars that facilitate extractivism have long shaped the use of seaports for access to resources, markets, and devalued labor. In the last decade, countries in the chain of imperialist exploitation have increased attempts to restore the external domination of African ports and lands while producing conditions that ensure wars, instability, corruption, and perpetuate a cycle of theft and underdevelopment. The war on Iran is set to sharpen these conditions as countries like the UAE and Turkey attempt to maintain their positions in a crumbling system. 

Karim F Hirji discloses how two of Tanzania's horticultural treasures of historic import are succumbing to subtle neocolonial domination. 

In this first part of a two-part policy note, Yassine Fall examines Senegal’s relations with the IMF. The analysis shows how the cycle of debt and adjustment in Senegal, and other parts of Africa and the developing world, has adversely affected the transformation of these countries.

Abukar assesses the cost of Türkiye's relations with Somalia on the lives and properties of Somalis in their homes and during their economic activities.

Daley situates the young academic’s tragic death in the recent history of anti-Blackness and marketisation in UK higher education, amidst performative diversity and enduring white supremacy.

The U.S. Army's July 15, 2026 activation of “Drongo Company,” a new Psychological Operations company within the 7th Psychological Operations Battalion, marks an important development in Washington's expanding information and psychological operations capabilities in Africa. The Army describes the unit as part of its effort to conduct psychological operations across “contested environments,” while reporting identifies its mission as supporting U.S. Africa Command.

This essay examines Türkiye’s two-stage intervention in Somalia since 2012. First came humanitarian involvement during the Somali famine in the early 2010s. Once the immediate crisis waned, Turkish economic and strategic interests came to dominate its relationship with Somalia. It is as if Islamic humanitarianism was the trojan horse for Türkiye’s long-term interests in and exploitation of Somalia.

Allowing us to examine how migrants remain excluded even under the guise of inclusion, Uçkan examines the lives of Syrian refugees in Turkey, which demonstrate the structural conditions that render them invisible, stateless, and as a cheap “army of labour” without a pathway for integration and progression in their material conditions.

Bilateral relations between South Africa (SA) and the United States (US) increasingly depict how US coercive power has been less concerned with the veneer of diplomacy since the current Trump administration. In addition to SA’s International Court of Justice (ICJ) case against genocide in Palestine, the National Health Insurance (NHI) Act and the Basic Education Laws Amendment (BELA) Act stand contrary to the policies the US administration seeks to see in SA. The article concludes on the constraints SA faces considering asymmetric global relations, and calls for building local capacity to protect autonomous decisions.