The prolonged disruption of shipping through the Strait of Hormuz has exposed how vulnerable Africa’s economies are to geopolitical shocks. Fuel prices have remained elevated, squeezing economies that depend heavily on petroleum imports from the Middle East. These include Ethiopia, Kenya, Mozambique, South Africa, Tanzania and Uganda. This vulnerability also puts at risk the continent’s push to escape poverty through what economists call structural transformation: moving workers from low-productivity activities such as subsistence farming into more productive jobs in manufacturing and modern services. The continent never fully participated in the export-manufacturing wave that transformed East Asia from the 1960s onward.…
Author: The Conversation
Uganda’s Kizza Besigye has been described as possibly the most arrested man in Africa. Besigye was once President Yoweri Museveni’s ally, and personal physician. He broke ranks with Museveni in 1999, and emerged as the most long-standing political opponent to the ageing president, who has run the country since 1986. For this, Besigye has been jailed, kept under house arrest, renditioned, forced into exile, and endured state violence countless times. He has been in jail since 2024. Barney Walsh and Dennis Jjuuko have studied Besigye’s remarkable political career. Who is Kizza Besigye? Kizza Besigye was born in Rukungiri district, south-western…
Kenya hosts nearly a million refugees, mainly from South Sudan and Somalia. Many of them have been living in refugee camps for decades. Now, the country is attempting a major shift in refugee policy. The Kenyan government and the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) developed the Shirika Plan, launching it in March 2025. The policy aims to move refugees away from long-term encampment and integrate them in society. Drawing on their research on refugee governance and migration in Kenya, Edwin Mutyenyoka and Franzisca Zanker explain the opportunities and challenges the plan presents for refugees and host communities. What is the…
At the dawn of Kenya’s colonial era in 1902, consumption of home-made alcohol was deeply embedded in society. For instance, among the Mijikenda of coastal Kenya, palm wine was integral (p.290) to traditional ceremonies, such as marriage and initiations, and in ritual offerings. This partly explains why the colonial authorities did not consider prohibiting African home-made liquors. As early as 1908, however, they did prohibit Africans from consuming or handling European liquors. The prohibition was ratified on the pretext of Europe’s commitment to preserving the presumed innocence of Africans. The ban on Africans’ consumption of European liquor fostered and sustained…
On the evening of April 26, the Egyptian merchant vessel Sward was hijacked by armed men a few miles off the Somali coast. It was steered towards an anchorage near the port of Garacad in Puntland, a semi-autonomous state in north-eastern Somalia. Over the following days, further armed men joined the Sward as well as an interpreter tasked with negotiating a ransom with the shipowner. At the time of writing, the ship remains under pirate control. Unfortunately, this is not an isolated event. Two oil tankers – the Palau-flagged Honour 25 and the Togo-flagged Eureka – were seized around the…
What began on Dec. 28 in Tehran as a revolt against economic hardship and the collapse of the national currency quickly spread across dozens of other Iranian cities and provinces. People from diverse socioeconomic, religious and ethnic backgrounds joined what has become the largest anti-regime protest since the 1979 revolution. Chants of “death to the dictator” and “death to Khamenei” echoed far beyond Tehran’s Grand Bazaar. As a response, the government shut off all internet services, leaving roughly 92 million Iranians in a digital blackout since Jan. 8. The protests are not an isolated eruption but the latest chapter in…
As Tanzania’s national elections approach, a familiar humdrum of coverage has emerged. It goes like this. In its crackdowns, censorship and harassment of the opposition, Tanzania is becoming increasingly repressive. President Samia Suluhu Hassan, who is seeking re-election in the October 2025 poll, increasingly resembles her predecessor, John Pombe Magufuli. Before he died in office in 2021, he banned media, censored journalists, hamstrung the opposition and rigged elections. Hassan is reverting to his tactics to lengthen her advantage in the elections. Yet, I would go further. Hassan has become, in key ways, more autocratic than Magufuli. She has crossed autocratic…
Three economists working in the area of “innovation-driven economic growth” won this year’s Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. Half of the 11 million Swedish kronor (about A$1.8 million) prize was awarded to Joel Mokyr, a Dutch-born economic historian at Northwestern University. The other half was jointly awarded to Philippe Aghion, a French economist at Collège de France and INSEAD, and Peter Howitt, a Canadian economist at Brown University. Collectively, the trio’s work has examined the importance of innovation in driving sustainable economic growth. It has also highlighted that in dynamic economies, old firms die as new firms are being…
In 1950, British forces killed at least 29 civilians in one of the deadliest, but least chronicled, episodes of colonial violence in Kenya. Armed soldiers killed at least 29 civilian members of Dini ya Msambwa, a spiritual and anti-colonial movement in Kenya active around what is now West Pokot county in the north-western region. Survivors describe the group’s gathering on 24 April 1950 as a peaceful one. However, British colonial forces, fearing a potential uprising, violently confronted the group at the Kolloa trading centre. It led to one of the highest number of deaths in a single day in a single place…
Kenya’s education ministry announced in March 2025 that mathematics would be an optional subject in senior secondary school, which begins in grade 10. Most students in this grade are aged 15 years. The education minister said the mathematics taught from grade 4 to grade 9 was sufficient for foundational “numeracy literacy”. The change, in January 2026, is part of a shift to a new education system styled as the competence based curriculum. The decision is not to scrap maths altogether but rather to make it optional. However, given the poor performance in this subject, it is expected there will be…
