To celebrate the 15 anniversary of Pambazuka News, Fahamu the publisher in conjunction with the Institute of Diplomacy and International Studies, University of Nairobi, organized a public lecture on 25 July 2016 delivered by one of the longest and most prolific contributors to Pambazuka News, Horace G. Campbell, Professor of African American Studies and Political Science, Syracuse University. Here’s the Audio on Soundcloud, Presentation on Slideshare and a  Video on YouTube of the lecture.

UNCTAD 14 presents a free market driven neoliberal trade paradigm which stands in stark contrast to the food sovereignty paradigm where smallholder farmers are social, cultural, and historical actors that make decisions based on a diversity of personal, ethical, and cultural factors and not just based on profit, business and markets.

Kenya seems to be hurtling inexorably towards another round of politically instigated violence connected to the 2017 elections. Hate speech is on the rise and there are even reports of groups arming themselves. Polarization is especially deepening between the Luo community on the one hand and the Kikuyu-Kalenjin ethnic alliance that rules Kenya.

The Moral Complexities of Eating Meat offers an appetizing sociological account of food politics, contemporary patterns of cultural identity, and the effect of meat-eating as an informal hypothesis of unity that can be useful in a country such as Kenya, whose metaphoric ‘man eat man’ greasy politics are well documented.

Kenyan elections have become increasingly delinked from the quest to meet the needs and aspirations of the people. They are almost entirely an elite circus providing the self-absorbed, politically impotent urban middle classes with something to Tweet about - or to pontificate on from the comfort of the bar stool - and the peasants perhaps a few coins or a branded T-shirt and free entertainment every five years.

Women’s rights were not won by men, LGBTI rights were not won by straight people, and refugee rights will not be won by non-refugees.

Grabbing of public land by powerful individuals continues in Kenya, despite commendable efforts that have been made over the years to end this menace. The National Land Commission has the primary responsibility of protecting all public land. But Kenyans should also take it upon themselves to safeguard public land by assisting the commission to discharge its mandate.

Organic farmers from Machakos, Kenya, say that fertiliser and seed companies even deploy their own extension officers and agro-dealers in the villages, who aggressively advertise the use of their products. When their promises prove false, nobody compensates the farmers for their losses.

Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta’s frequent foreign travels are unprecedented in his country. His visit to Germany last month, touted at home as part of the president’s strategic engagement with the developed world, was a dismal flop. It is unlikely that anything meaningful for the people of Kenya came out of the trip.

A young Kenyan woman troubled by the question of her identity sets off to Indian to find her roots. She wants to determine once and for all whether she is Kenyan or Indian. Or possibly both. It turns out to be a great journey of self-discovery that even surprises her.

    Today, 19th April 2016 is D - day for the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. In this Tuesday over one hundred political parties and social movements in over forty capital cities of the world are simultaneously demonstrating in solidarity with the Bolivarian socialist revolution that is threatened by US imperialism and their counterrevolutionary puppets inside Venezuela. 

The recent arrest comes only six months after the activist was released released from prison on fabricated charges of committing arson. On 16 May 2014 he was convicted to seven years' imprisonment – a sentence that was later reduced on appeal to two years.

As Kenya prepares for its next general elections in 2017, the parallels to previous violent elections are staggering. The electoral commission and the courts have lost credibility in the eyes of the public. Already the country is polarized along ethnic lines. The ruling party insists it will win a second term. The opposition says there are rigging plans afoot and that it will not aept a fraudulent outcome or go to court to seek redress. The signs are ominous.

Plans for real estate development, tree planting, and new cash crops for economic up-liftment in the area of Mwireri/Gitugi and its neighbourhood in Laikipia County, have been dealt a severe blow by the illegal siting of a stone crusher and quarry on land earmarked for agricultural and residential development.

How the National Constitution treats minorities is a good test of a nation’s maturity. How government applies their rules is a good test of the state’s maturity.

Popular Kenyan politician Josiah Mwangi Kariuki is widely believed to have been assassinated by agents of the regime of Kenya’s first president Jomo Kenyatta, whose son, Uhuru, is now head of state. JM was a sharp critic of Kenyatta’s corrupt ethnic state. The truth about his murder – like several other political assassinations in Kenya – has never been fully known.

Kenya is now the third most corrupt country in the world, aording to a survey on prevalence of economic crimes released in Nairobi last week by audit firm PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PwC). Kenya only fared better than South Africa and France. The Jubilee government's numerous pledges to deal decisively with graft remain just that - pledges. Public despair is growing.

When the African American freedom fighter, Malcolm X, visited Kenya in 1959, he found he had a lot in common with Pinto. They planned a common strategy to deal with the daily humiliation and indignities suffered by both Africans and African-Americans. Malcolm X was assassinated on February 21, 1965, three days before Pinto.

Politicians of the ruling Jubilee coalition in Kenya and public officials routinely lie to citizens, and the public has come to aept that as normal. This has led to a debilitating cynicism and resignation to the inevitability of deception. When the lies are not just expected but aeptable, when they no longer arouse outrage and when national policies can be built around them, it is evidence that the nation is sick.

President Uhuru Kenyatta’s official visit to Israel this week raises serious questions about Kenya’s foreign policy. The regime in Tel Aviv is arguably the most racist and islamophobic in Israel’s history. Israeli leaders have advocated for the murder of Palestinian children, the expulsion of refugees and even the banning of books that portray Arab-Jewish couples.