Factories drive Africa’s billionaires

We in South Africa have long comforted ourselves with the assumption that, whatever the continent’s turbulence, our economy is Africa’s biggest, anchored by deep capital markets, globally... 

Courts that constrict freedom

Concluding an 11-day, four-nation African trip in Malabo, Equatorial Guinea, last month, the Catholic Church’s Pope Leo XIV spoke of the need to promote the dignity of prisoners and not to use the... 

Flight paths and fault lines

There was a time when Taiwan counted several African countries among its allies. Now, only one remains, and even that final relationship is so constrained that its leader cannot freely visit,... 

Sermon against executive excesses

On the second leg of a ten-day, four-nation African tour last month, Pope Leo XIV stood before Cameroon’s 93-year-old President Paul Biya in Yaoundé and did what many citizens would think twice... 

AfCFTA shifts from treaty architecture to operational trade system amid persistent frictions

A quiet shift is under way on the African continent. The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), long billed as the most ambitious economic integration initiative since the Organisation of... 

AfCFTA shifts from treaty architecture to operational trade system amid persistent frictions

A quiet shift is under way on the African continent. The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), long billed as the most ambitious economic integration initiative since the Organisation of... 

Bongani Khumalo

This week we profile Bongani Hilton Khumalo, GM: business development and integration at bp Southern Africa, a downstream petroleum and energy solutions company 

The long game of power

As British historian John Dalberg-Acton famously observed in the nineteenth century, power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. This warning feels apt in relation to... 

Africa’s critical moment to lead change

The global race towards decarbonisation is not only an environmental imperative but also an industrial revolution at the core of which lies a simple fact: the world cannot transition to a... 

Fluency will fuel African trade

Angola – one of only two Portuguese-speaking nations in our Southern African neck of the woods – plans to introduce French as a compulsory school subject from the age of ten, a move officials argue... 

Starlink stumbles over Namibian laws

Elon Musk has once again failed to get his way, with Starlink, his satellite-based broadband network service, denied a licence in Namibia for failing to comply with local laws requiring a minimum... 

Afcon victory taken off the pitch

It may be just a football decision, but the ramifications are being felt far beyond the pitch. I’m referring, of course, to the Confederation of African Football (CAF) appeals board decision to... 

Trump versus the truth

Donald Trump was at it again this month, repeating the lie that Somali-born Minnesota Congresswoman Ilhan Omar married her brother to enter the US and describing her country of origin as “a... 

Ukraine war: Africa pays with its young men

The Russia-Ukraine war, now more than four years old, is the sort of distant conflict we Africans might imagine has nothing to do with us. Except that many of our young men – I have yet to hear of... 

Mediterranean migrants face rising deaths

More than 500 people died in the Mediterranean Sea in the first 40 days of 2026 as they desperately attempted to make their way to Europe in search of safety or opportunity, which their often... 

What impact will Africa’s busy 2026 election calendar have on the economic outlook?

Africa faces one of its most crowded electoral calendars this year at a time of shrinking global tolerance for political risk, turning the ballot box into a policy credibility test for investors... 

When elections turn bizarre

Elsewhere in this edition, I report on upcoming elections in Africa, drawing attention to continental observers’ concern that outcomes that increase political risk could dampen both domestic and... 

What impact will Africa’s busy 2026 election calendar have on the economic outlook?

Africa faces one of its most crowded electoral calendars this year at a time of shrinking global tolerance for political risk, turning the ballot box into a policy credibility test for investors... 

US deportation wave crashes again

It all happened below the media’s radar, but we now know that in the dead of night on January 14 nine men and women were handcuffed, bundled onto a plane and flown from the US to Yaoundé in... 

Britain’s Rwanda reckoning

Regular readers of this column will recall the now scrapped and always controversial 2022 scheme under which the UK proposed to dispatch would-be asylum seekers arriving in small boats from France... 

Carnets kick into digital gear

Do you know how many ATA Carnets are issued every year, as well as the number of countries or customs territories that issue them and the value of the merchandise covered, in rand terms? The... 

Biblical diseases’ silent return

It has been about a year since the US, traditionally the largest donor to global health initiatives, ended funding for thousands of programmes aimed at fighting infectious diseases and providing... 

Sophistication before civilisation

The latest edition of the peer-reviewed Science Advances journal, published last month, features an article revealing insights that will humble those who assumed sophistication arrived quite late... 

Africa’s bumper election year

Africa has a crowded electoral calendar this year, with citizens in more than ten countries poised to cast their ballots. Elections have already taken place in Benin and Uganda, with the rest of... 

Symbol of floods now gone

Last week, Rosita Salvador Mubiango breathed her last in a rural southern Mozambican hospital where she had been admitted for weeks, her young life cruelly snuffed out by a blood disorder she had... 

Reflections on US seizure of Maduro

They say death and taxes are the only certainties in life. For me – and a growing number of others – a third now definitely applies: I will never be allowed into the US, which has made it clear... 

A letter from 2025 to Africa in 2030

Dear Africa in 2030, I write to you from the tail end of 2025, a year marked by restlessness – from Gen Z protests to fraught elections and a coup in Guinea-Bissau only days before the time of... 

Africa calls the shots

A few months back, I wrote in this column about insurgents holding boardroom veto power over development projects in Africa, referencing, among others, TotalEnergies’ $20-billion liquefied natural... 

Old-timers who refuse to step down

There is more in common between Cameroon and Cote d’Ivoire than their shared history as former French colonies: they are led by elderly men who just don’t want to leave power, and both secured new... 

Trump’s empty-chair diplomacy

Over the next two days, Johannesburg will play host to the 2025 G20 Leaders’ Summit, which US President Donald Trump has announced he will boycott, calling it a “total disgrace” over his unproven... 

A voice too loud for America

Wole Soyinka needs no introduction in Africa – or shouldn’t. The legendary writer, poet and activist became the continent’s first Nobel Prize in Literature laureate back in 1986, and generations of... 

It’s cash over conscience for enablers of autocrats

Africa is not short of autocrats, but what rarely makes the headlines is that some glossy corporations from the Global North act as their enablers, padding their own bank accounts while propping up... 

Kariba’s rehabilitation lays foundation for another 50 years of hydropower delivery

After several delays since its launch in 2017, the $294-million Kariba Dam Rehabilitation Project (KDRP), aimed at repairing decades of erosion from high-velocity water discharge and refurbishing... 

From coup to campaign trail

October has been an event-packed month. We’ve witnessed the passing of Raila Odinga – the President Kenya never had – the electoral defeat of an incumbent head of State, Seychelles’ Wavel... 

Kariba’s rehabilitation lays foundation for another 50 years of hydropower delivery

After several delays since its launch in 2017, the $294-million Kariba Dam Rehabilitation Project (KDRP), aimed at repairing decades of erosion from high-velocity water discharge and refurbishing... 

The blessing of brief Presidencies

The relatively new African phenomenon of the one-term Presidency – the subject of a recent instalment of this column – is not letting up, with the continent’s latest failed wannabe two-term head of... 

Africa’s youth are done waiting

There is a fresh tremor running through Africa, where young people – those born in the 1990s and 2000s, the so-called Gen Z – are no longer content to wait for change. The Arab Spring protests that... 

Militants with a boardroom veto

Mozambican officials, desperate to jump-start economic development in the south-eastern African nation, must have breathed a sigh of relief when French energy giant TotalEnergies announced in May... 

From one term to oblivion

As I sat down to write this piece, my mind flashed back to our journalism history classes in college, where the Chicago Daily Tribune’s infamous ‘Dewey defeats Truman’ headline from November 3,... 

Not quite a country

Somaliland – which I have previously called “the other Somali republic” in this column to highlight its lesser visibility compared with Somalia, from which it seceded in 1991 but has struggled to...