The theme for this year’s World Teachers Day is “Empowering teachers, building sustainable societies.” It is such a gratifying, highly motivating theme, demonstrating the seriousness with which the teaching profession needs to be taken. Without urgent attention to the state of this key profession in Africa – and globally – the AU’s Agenda 2063 and the just launched Sustainable Development Goals will not be achieved.

September 25 marked the 4th anniversary of the death of Kenya's celebrated environmentalist and Nobel Peace Laureate Wangari Maathai. A tribute.

Criticism of The Hague-based court as targeting African leaders at the behest of Western powers, and the relentless efforts by the Big Men to escape accountability for alleged crimes, seem to frustrate international justice. The ICC might appear to be weak but it still has the teeth to bite.

The hugely unpopular failed coup in the land of Thomas Sankara represents a clash between retrogressive forces supporting the status quo and the popular struggles of determined citizens demanding an end to imperialist dominance of the country's public life by France and its allies. For more, watch Pambazuka's new video blog

The ubiquitous ‘development goals’ chosen by the United Nations – first Millennium (MDGs) in 2000 and now Sustainable (SDGs) – were and are and will be a distraction from the real work of fighting poverty done by social justice activists, including Africans.

“I became depressed on behalf of my age group; for clearly, we have failed our offspring who are to inherit the earth after us. What sort of earth shall we leave behind for them? Will my great-great-great grand-children have any tilapia to eat?”

Tired of a stale diet of propaganda churned out by state radio, many Ethiopians rely on foreign broadcasters to follow events in their own country. Now the BBC has announced plans to broadcast in Ethiopian languages. This is welcome. But Ethiopians must continue the struggle to have their own independent and vibrant media.

The supposedly self-evident idea that the nation-state is the logical form of political organization for the destruction of colonialism and for the remaking of African lives is patently false. True African liberation will not occur within the colonial structures of power erected by – and inherited from - Empire.

To much of the outside world, the self-declared republic of Somaliland is a success story that, although lacking international recognition, contrasts sharply with the collapsed nation of Somalia. Not so. In the past five years, the government of President Ahmed Mohamoud Silanyo has been engaged in a sustained campaign of self-enrichment and aggrandizement as it suppressed dissent and debased political debate through the overt promotion of tribal politics. The people must now mobilise to restore Somaliland to its founding tenets.

Somalia has seen renewed international interest this year, with visits from foreign leaders, international conferences on ending piracy and significant foreign investment. Bashir Goth links these developments to the global realization that the world economy suffers from Somali-based piracy, caused by neglect of the Horn of Africa nation during its 20 years of collapse.

The much-hyped Sustainable Development Goals to be adopted by the UN summit starting this week in New York will not deliver the new economy that the world so desperately needs. Their creators want to reduce poverty and inequality without touching the wealth and power of the global 1%. They fail to understand a basic fact: Mass poverty is the product of extreme wealth accumulation and over-consumption by a few.

Despite Paris’s official condemnation of the failed coup in Burkina Faso, and a threat to impose sanctions if the coup leaders did not relinquish power, the incident once again brings to focus decades of French hegemony in ‘independent’ West Africa. Through political, security, economic and cultural ties, France maintains a tight stranglehold in Francophone Africa, both to serve its interests and maintain a last bastion of imperial prestige.

The leader of the short-lived coup in Burkina Faso, Gen. Gilbert Diendere, is a close ally of former President Compaore who was overthrown by a popular uprising last October. Diendere is a Western stooge as well, with connections with France and the US, the two European powers that have over the years frustrated the Burkinabe people’s struggles for meaningful self-determination.

On September 13, 2015, President Edgar Lungu announced that he had drawn battle lines with Post Newspapers editor-in-chief Fred M’membe and vowed to ‘take him on’ using his powers as Head of State. In most jurisdictions, including Zambia, what President Lungu issued against the journalist constitutes a criminal offence of threatening or uttering a death threat.

It is not easy to know how much a president, or any politician, is worth in Africa. So it was a matter of great public interest when Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari, described by his image minders as ‘living an austere and Spartan lifestyle’, recently announced that he owns two inherited mud huts, some cows and a little money. But is that all?

The pyramids of Egypt, erected thousands of years ago, were constructed with a precision that cannot yet be replicated with all the sophistication of today’s technology. Africans must refrain from looking east, west, north or south but inside, for the solutions they seek!

Ethiopia's sweeping anti-terrorism law has been used to prosecute journalists and bloggers, opposition politicians, and peaceful protesters. Many have been accused without compelling evidence of association with banned opposition groups.

Isn’t it astounding that political and community leaders can announce plans to address violence in another province while ignoring far more deaths in their own backyard? What exactly is going on here? Could this be part of the rise of Zulu nationalism in South Africa?

Female Genital Mutilation leads not only to severe physical consequences but also psychological and emotional ones ranging from depression, to lack of self-esteem, isolation, solitude, marginalization, insecurity, memory loss and fear of sexual intercourse to post-traumatic stress disorder. A counseling psychologist working with girls in rural Kenya shares her experiences in this interview.

Civil society organisations from around the world have insisted that climate change is the biggest and most urgent threat to the Planet. A radical transformation of food systems is needed, away from an industrial model and its false solutions, and toward food sovereignty, local food systems, and integral agrarian reform in order to achieve the full realization of the human right to adequate food and nutrition.