In the wake of disturbing homophobic statements from certain US Christian groups in support of anti-gay legislation in Uganda and beyond, the Pocono Record comments on the work of faith leaders in the US to counter the animosity.

The surge in anti-gay statements by leaders across the continent is aimed at diverting the attention of people both at home and abroad from the lack of good governance and democracy, writes Hama Tuma.

Democracy Now! producer Sharif Abdel Kouddous spoke with Nnimmo Bassey outside the World Peoples’ Climate Conference gates in Tiquipaya, Bolivia.

Why should one take pride in one’s identity or country, asks Elyas Mulu Kiros, in an exploration of the tension between national and ethnic identities in Ethiopia.

The anniversaries of the Rwandan and Armenian genocides and the Jewish Holocaust all occur in April, writes Gerald Caplan, but last month’s memorial service at Tufts University in Boston was unusual in bringing together survivors from all three affected communities to bear witness together.

Fiercely critical of the Nigerian political and business classes' perpetual money-grabbing and disenfranchising of ordinary Nigerians, Kola Ibrahim makes the case for Nigeria's Labour Party to develop into a 'mega-party' representative of the country's majority.

As the US's Tea Party marches on, Tim Wise invites readers to imagine if the movement's participants were black.

Tanzania has taken ‘the bold and commendable decision to offer citizenship to 162,000 Burundian refugees who fled their country in 1972’, writes Lucy Hovil. But, warns Hovil, it seems premature to refer to the refugees as ‘citizens’, as recent telephone interviews with them suggest that they are ‘neither allowed freedom of movement, nor the security of having the necessary and vital documentation to prove their new status’.

Amidst opposition to giving constitutional recognition to Kadhi's courts and Muslim law, Yash Ghai argues that there are ‘few more critical factors to building Kenya as a peaceful and united nation than the way we resolve the controversy … Denying a community its identity as expressed in its most cherished values, and which do no harm to others, is the surest way to conflict and disintegration.’

Kiswahili's assimilation of words from other languages while retaining its Bantu grammatical and literary structure is 'a sign of cultural resistance', writes Chambi Chacage, rather than evidence that it is 'being bastardised', as recently argued by Makwaia wa Kuhenga. What Makwaia laments as ‘the transformation of Kiswahili to “something that one may call Kiswa-English” is another phase of expanding Kiswahili’s rich vocabulary by incorporating new synonyms,’ Chachage says.

The escalation of US militarisation in relation to Africa reflects the centrality of counter-insurgency to current White House policy, writes Daniel Volman. The US is keen to avoid direct intervention by building up local capacity to root out terrorist threats, Volman observes. Or, as one senior US military officer put it, '[W]e don't want to see our guys going in and getting wacked … We want Africans to go in.'

Within the backdrop of Nigeria's post-colonial history, Richard Ali remembers Dr Bala Mohammed Bauchi, assassinated on 10 July 1981 and a man who 'in the 16 years before his murder … had established himself first on the radio waves and then in academe as the most lucid of the Nigerian leftist theorists'.

Perched at the very top of an iniquitous global economic pyramid, the world's financial elite are nothing more than parasites leeching off the lifeblood of the world's poor and middle classes, writes Glenn Ashton. While the hold on wealth and resources of the top 20 per cent is deeply concerning, the power of an elite 1 per cent is simply perverse, Ashton stresses.

Fifty years after ‘18 African countries allegedly gained their “independence” from colonialism’, it is ‘safe to state that most of Africa suffers from the delusion of being independent’, argues Hama Tuma. ‘Colonialism played many tricks on gullible Africans,’ writes Tuma, ‘and its most damaging joke has been to declare that it has left…while actually rushing back in through the back door.'

The commitment of African finance ministers to continental integration, the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and the declarations of their own heads of state has come into question after national delegations from South Africa, Rwanda and Egypt succeeded in deleting any reference to budgetary targets for education, health, agriculture and water in the report and resolutions of the annual meeting of the African Union and Economic Commission for the Africa Conference of Ministers of Finance, Planning and Economic Development, which took place in Malawi at the end of March. Geoffrey Njora explores the possible consequences of their actions.

Much of Kenyan civil society wants politicians to leave the current draft of the constitution alone, fearing that they will make only those changes that benefit themselves, and that disadvantage ordinary citizens, writes Yash Ghai. As various groups put pressure on the politicians to change specific provisions, from a gender, religious or other perspective, Ghai argues that if Kenya is to get a new constitution at all, it may be worth accepting compromises on some issues.

In a piece written for Pambazuka News in 2007, Annwen E. Bates looked at how Africa’s lack presented as spectacle is used ‘to legitimise Euro-American programmes of salvation – from colonialism to aid involvement’. With South Africa in the spotlight ahead of the football World Cup in June, Bates revisits some of the ideas raised by her original article.

People born after 1980 have benefited little from 30 years of Zimbabwe’s independence, writes the Youth Alliance Democracy, thanks to the government’s continued failure to empower young people, rather than seeing them as equal partners in politics. Half of political representatives – from local government to the cabinet – should be ‘youths below the ages of 35, who can forward and address the youth concerns and youth mainstreaming in all national policies and processes’, the alliance argues.

Economist David Ricardo's theory of 'comparative advantage', despite being highly dubious, continues to exert a high degree of influence on Tanzanian policymakers, writes Chambi Chachage.

The late Fatima Meer was 'was to me like that elusive relative is to you', writes Azad Essa, a person who lived an incredible life whom you never got to know and who lacks the genuine recognition they deserve.