President Obama has responded to the Ebola crisis in Africa by sending 3,000 military personnel to the affected region. The real beneficiary of this militarised messianism is, in fact, the military-industrial complex back in the US

Ghana seems to have crossed the threshold of moral decency on a dangerous slope towards self-destruction and moral turpitude. It is now a dog-eat-dog society where those in power have abandoned the citizens to the wolves of private aggrandisement. Does the president see this?

Much like Al Qaeda, the Islamic State (ISIS) is made-in-the-USA, an instrument of terror designed to divide and conquer the oil-rich Middle East and to counter Iran’s growing influence in the region.

NGOs give the impression that they are filling the vacuum created by a retreating state. And they are, but their real contribution is that they defuse political anger and dole out as aid or benevolence what people ought to have by right. They alter the public psyche.

It is not the religion of Islam that leads Muslims to commit heinous acts. It is simply the anger, hate and rage over not being able to do anything to stop Europeans or the West from oppressing people who profess the same religion.

Controlling seed means controlling food production. Africans must choose how they farm. They must not become perpetually indebted to a predatory, profit-driven agricultural-industrial complex.

ISIS beheadings have provoked instinctive revulsion, justly so. Too bad the same reaction doesn’t follow America’s equally barbaric continuation of the death penalty, a habit other civilized nations have abandoned.

The serious allegations of tax fraud made against the publisher of a Zambian newspaper implicate a number of top ranking government officials and institutions, starting with President Michael Sata. These too should be held to account if there is full commitment to fighting corruption in Zambia

A vote for Scottish independence will be a vote against the inequality and all that the British state represents. However, independence, in reality, will bring little change for the poor and working class.

Scramble for fighter jets, panic among law enforcement agencies and the rush to introduce new legislation have been the order of the day for Western authorities in reaction to militant Islam since September 11, 2001. But these strategies are counter-productive as they are not based on a keen understanding of the spreading radicalism in the Muslim world

Entitlement, fledgling institutions and a lack of accountability have yielded rampant corruption in the world’s youngest country, South Sudan

The whole Zambian legal system needs to be revamped. Still deeply rooted in its colonial origins, the system has stifled creativity and stunted the possible independent growth of the country’s legal institutions, law making, judicial decisions and legal scholarship.

President Uhuru Kenyatta recently caused a national stir by appearing in public donning military uniform, something not done by any of his three predecessors. This comes at a time when there is evidence of growing militarization of the state in Kenya.

Economics was originally called political economy, concerned with scarce resources and how to ensure general welfare for everyone given that fact. But US President Nixon and UK Prime Minister Thatcher are responsible for launching the Age of Economist as God

With its wealth of natural resources, Madagascar has the potential for healthy economic growth, yet remains mostly poor. The government must stop elites from fighting over national profits in a way that keeps plunging the country into turmoil and recession

Universities in South Africa and the rest of the continent have tended to either remain aloof from society or follow government prescriptions dociley. Neither of these positions allows for these institutions to contribute to the democratic formation and critical capacity of the societies in which they exist. Universities need to assume a position of ‘embedded autonomy’ while enacting, within their own structures, the democratic values and practices which they teach

It is unacceptable for national leaders to resort to populist manoeuvres, even taking advantage of the suffering of poor citizens, to gain political capital. Tokenism replaces comprehensive policy responses to critical national challenges

Should those who took Ghana to the IMF in 1983 be allowed near economic decision-making in Ghana today? The country that until recently was touted as an example of ‘Africa rising’ is now in dire straits

Nat Nakasa – one of South Africa’s most promising writers – died in New York in 1965. His remains were returned to South Africa on 19 August for reburial on 13 September 2014 near his childhood home in Chesterville, a township outside Durban.

Globalization cannot help develop Africa, as peddlers of the ‘Africa rising’ myth claim. In reality, globalization is yet another form of colonization - not by nations but by multinationals with the active support and encouragement of their governments. Happily, there are alternative paths to Africa’s true development