Author: NLM Correspondent

By Nic Cheeseman and Rebecca Gordon The coronavirus pandemic has gone hand-in-hand with considerable democratic backsliding. According to a new study, democratic freedoms were undermined in 83 countries from March to September 2020. This should concern all of us. Oversight and accountability during the COVID-19 pandemic are essential for both the public and democratic health of a nation. We set out to explore the role that legislatures played in responding to COVID-19. In particular, we looked at how they scrutinised governments’ actions. Legislatures are central to modern democratic politics. But they are often bypassed during moments of crisis as presidents…

Tools for eliminating bottlenecks By Benedict Okey Oramah Africa was on the cusp of a revolutionary economic transformation before the COVID-19 pandemic struck, and the ensuing crisis just underlined the urgency of that process. Right now, countries across Africa are overcoming years of colonial division through the African Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA). The AfCFTA is, in many ways, a treaty that will transform Africa from a fractured, commodity-dependent group of economies into a vibrant, integrated market of over 1.2 billion people. Trading under the agreement, delayed by the pandemic, commenced on January 1, 2021. The African Export-Import Bank has…

By Patrick Quirck Strengthening democracy abroad is a priority for the Biden administration, evident in its commitment to hold a “summit of democracies” to galvanize support for fighting corruption, combating authoritarianism, and advancing human rights. The president has also elevated the issue within his National Security Council staff by creating a high-level coordinator for democracy and human rights. As it crafts its broader democracy agenda, the administration will identify priorities, metrics to assess progress, and guiding principles that inform how it will use available tools to accomplish objectives. One such guiding principle should be bolstering the “resilience” of democratic systems…

By Caleb Kibet The risk of infringing on privacy is growing by the day given the increased frequency and granularity of the data being collected, and advances in the technology for processing them. This has, inevitably, led to the need for laws to secure personal data privacy. Researchers and research data are not exempt: advances in big data analytics for research have driven the collection of even more significant amounts of data. Researchers have traditionally self-regulated. But personal data protection laws have begun to increase restrictions. Researchers need to be aware. In Kenya, a new law came into force late…

On December 4, the African Court on Human and Peoples Rights delivered a landmark opinion on colonial era vagrancy laws, which criminalize activities such as loitering, public indecency, and begging. The judgment has the potential to help reshape criminal justice policy and practice in dozens of African countries and reduce prison overcrowding. The Court issued an Advisory Opinion in response to a case brought by the Pan African Lawyers Union and found that vagrancy laws or bylaws in nearly every country in Africa discriminate against marginalized populations including women, children, people with disabilities, and others. “These vague and arbitrary laws,…

The World Bank has said it will commit $12 billion as concessional loans to assist African countries access foreign vaccines. During a virtual meeting on the Africa COVID-19 Vaccine Financing and Deployment Strategy, the WB informed that the emergency vaccine financing projects in Africa, including Ghana, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Niger, Mozambique, Tunisia, Eswatini and Cabo Verde. The funds are available now, and for most African countries, the financing would be on grant or highly concessional terms — IFC is working to mobilize financing for vaccine production and therapeutics focused on developing countries. Since the outbreak of Covid-19 last…

Kenya is bracing for a surge in toxic political rhetoric in the coming months amid renewed agitation for a rotational presidency. President Uhuru Kenyatta set the tone for the rotational presidency debate last month with remarks at a funeral suggesting he would prefer a person from an ethnic community other than any of the two that have produced the country’s past presidents to succeed him. His remarks on January 9 have particularly unsettled supporters of Deputy President William Ruto who see them as part of a scheme to block the DP from ascending to the top seat. Ethnicity is considered…

Somalia last month threatened to withdraw from a regional bloc after the group ruled in favour of Kenya in a diplomatic row between the two countries. A fact-finding mission was created by the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (Igad) in December 2020 in an intervention aimed at easing tensions between the two neighbouring countries. On December 15, Somalia cut diplomatic ties with Kenya and wrote to the regional bloc of eight members, demanding an independent mission to verify claims that Kenya was arming and training militia to fight the Somalia National Army forces stationed in Gedo near their common border. Led…

By Patrick Smith Tribunals and courts that are holding companies to account on charges of corruption and environmental destruction are changing the economic weather, little by little. It has been a period of reckoning for some of the world’s biggest resource companies in Africa and the governments they make deals with. It started on 22 January when Geneva’s Tribunal Correctionnel handed down a five-year prison sentence to Franco-Israeli magnate Beny Steinmetz on charges of grand corruption and money laundering. Presiding judge Alexandra Banna concluded that “Steinmetz was the main beneficiary” of a criminal operation to secure mining rights in Guinea…

It is not just in Kenya that constitutional democracy is under sustained assault. Different events around the world point to a similar trend: the storming of the Capitol in Washington in December 2020, the coup in Myanmar, the changes of regime in Poland and Hungary, the overall failure of the Arab Spring movements and the rise of toxic nationalisms around the world all make it difficult to see a bright future for constitutional democracy under the rule of law. Kenya’s constitutional democracy, which finds expression in the 2010 Constitution, is often hailed as an exemplar of what modern democracy should…