The BRICS are united in their drive for foreign direct investment, a thirst for natural resources and poor environmental regulation. A closer examination of the predatory capitalist penetration of each BRIC nation reveals multi-national companies carving up Africa in a similar way the countries of the 1884 Berlin conference did to Africa

Whether China’s growing presence in Africa is cause for celebration or caution is a matter that has left analysts scratching their heads in the past decade or so. Perspectives range from Sino-optimism, to Sino-pragmatism to Sino-pessimism

On the occasion of the 4th edition of the West African peasant seed fair, held in Djimini, Senegal, from March 11-13, 2014, 350 participants, representing 54 delegations from Benin, Burkina Faso, The Gambia, Niger, Mali, Togo, Senegal, Guinea, India, Europe and Canada assembled to promote peasant seeds.

The United States is more than just an ally to fascists in Ukraine and everywhere else; the American South provided an historical model for fascism. The fascist order of the pre-Sixties Solid South was simply a domestic expression of U.S. Manifest Destiny – the national religion. The fascists – both local and imperial – have laid siege to Russia.

African progressives must stand up and speak out against the wave of anti-gay laws now blowing across the continent – aided by American Christian fundamentalists pursuing a white supremacist agenda. The rights of same-gender loving persons are human rights that are inextricably linked with the rights of every person in society

Squeezed between rising economic costs of education and living standards, and low motivation for academic studies in a socially intolerant environment, authorities have been struggling to lure foreign students into educational institutions in post-communist Russia for more than a decade now.

China has never denied that its Africa policy has its own strategic interests. However, one of the most outstanding features of China’s policy is its aspiration to promote South-South cooperation and to achieve the renaissance of Asia and Africa. Unlike the former colonial masters, China’s engagement provides Africa with new development opportunities

Every free Black person owes a debt of gratitude to the Haitian Revolution. Now Haiti needs you. It is ten years since imperialist forces overthrew Haiti’s democratically elected leader and foisted on them a Western stooge. The people are resisting. Take action

China may view the Japanese leader’s recent tour of Africa as an attempt to contain its own influence in Africa. Japan is focusing on developing trade with Africa, particularly Mozambique’s natural gas. How will China adjust to a new competitor?

Concern is growing at the secrecy surrounding deals struck between Haitian government and US and Canadian mining companies over the country’s estimated £12bn gold, silver and copper deposits

To Cabral, the liberation struggle was a revolution to overthrow the oppressive system of domination and exploitation of one human being by another. This has not been fully achieved in Africa, despite the end of formal colonialism. The liberation movements and current regimes lack an astute ideology grounded in the history and aspirations of their own people

Under Mandela’s presidency, the foundations for an enabling environment for civil society in South Africa were laid and Civicus, the global civil society alliance honours the passing of Madiba who in 2004, bestowed his name to the Nelson Mandela-Graca Machel Innovation Awards

The case of Amarildo, an Afro-Brazilian teenager tortured to death by the Brazilian police represents the dispossession of blacks and institutionalized racism of Brazilian society as black people of the favelas continue to confront racial stereotypes that dehumanize and ultimately take their lives

Languages

I wish I could talk to you in languages

Touch you in Wolof

Kiss your body in Lingala

Love you in Bambara

I wish I could talk to you in my own voices

And with my music

Those sounds which burn in our soul

So, smiling in Chokwe

Play with you in Swahili

I dream of venting my being

In Fula, Mandang

And after that, loose myself in the between, in your Yoruba

Remember in Umbundo

Come in Kimbundo

But, oh no, I only speak Portuguese

Colonial languages

And the post-colonial conditions

And freedom?

Which language to speak?

Which chant to sing?

Can silence translate it?

Can space contain it?

*Translated from Portuguese by Alyxandra Gomes

Brazil conjures up the misleading notion of being a racial democracy, yet its Afro-Brazilian population continues to experience overt and covert forms of racism. In this special two part issue of Pambazuka News we seek to speak truth to whiteness in Brazil which is symptomatic of a global white supremacist thinking, despite the fact that people of colour are the majority in the world

Brazilian authorities have only recently embarked on affirmative measures to redress many years of racist policies that led to limited access to jobs by the country’s large black population. Whether these initiatives will succeed remains to be seen

The rejection of Cuban doctors upon their arrival by associating them with “slaves” and “domestic servants” reveals the racist and class-based imagery of Brazilian “medical Whiteness”. A national debate is needed to change this pernicious perception of the black person

Victor Nee and Sonja Opper’s (2012) book on Capitalism From Below: Markets and Institutional Change in China is an ambitious attempt at explaining, theoretically and empirically, the country’s economic miracle. It is also a bold attempt at prescribing a model for replicating such a success in other reforming countries.

Madagascar, a country rich in natural resources and potential to sustain its own development even though its people is one of the poorest is the world, is facing strong pressures of land grabbing by local and foreign investors at the expense of peasant and local communities

For the past two decades, Russian language studies has drastically fallen among the African population primarily due to lack of general interest, financial constraints in support for study programs and a lack of consistent interactive cultural activities by the Russian authorities, both Russian and African experts say