Africa

‘I can hear the roar of women’s silence’ October 2012
On the 25th Anniversary of Sankara's assassination Sokari Ekrine considers the importance of his vision for women's emancipation.

Thomas Sankara: an African leader with a message for Europe October 2012
On the 25th anniversary of Sankara's assassination, Nick Dearden argues we need to remember him to challenge dominant views of Africa and fight our own debt crisis in Europe

Marikana miners: The massacre of our illusions August 2012
The struggle of miners at the Lonmin mine in South Africa is a turning point in organised workers’ relationship with the now thoroughly neoliberal ANC argues Leonard Gentle, setting the strike in historical and political context

African labour and the Chinese dragon July 2012
Róisín Hinds reports from the Zambian Copperbelt, a site of intense labour conflict linked to Chinese investment

Review: No Land! No House! No Vote! Voices from Symphony Way January 2012
No Land! No House! No Vote! Voices from Symphony Way, reviewed by Martin Legassick

Don’t feed the world? How food aid can do more harm than good January 2012
While the media again reports 'famine in the horn of Africa' caused by 'drought', Rasna Warah looks at the real reasons why people are going hungry

Shack fightback: Bandile Mdlalose on Abahlali baseMjondolo December 2011
Bandile Mdlalose talks to Lorna Stephenson about Abahlali baseMjondolo, a radical poor people’s movement in South Africa

Reclaiming the South African dream December 2011
South African activist Vishwas Satgar looks at post-apartheid South Africa 17 years on

Niger Delta: a quiet resistance December 2011
Sokari Ekine meets women’s movements in the Niger Delta and discovers that in this militarised country even small acts take courage

Aspiring to Tahrir December 2011
Justin Pearce asks when African hope will translate into real change

African awakenings: Hope for the future December 2011
Firoze Manji charts the revolts and rebellions that have been occurring not just in northern Africa but across the whole continent

Libya after Gaddafi: ‘The continuity is striking’ December 2011
The National Transitional Council’s ‘new Libya’ is all too familiar, writes Tommy Miles

Samir Amin at 80 December 2011
Nick Dearden looks at the theories of one of Africa's greatest radical thinkers – still going strong at 80

Somalia: shocking images aren’t enough November 2011
Marilyn McHarg, from Médecins sans Frontières, argues that aid groups don't discuss the reasons for food shortages

Malawi’s unsafe abortion toll November 2011
A recent survey reveals that unsafe abortions are killing three women and girls daily in Malawi

Remember the dead, fight for the living October 2011
Peter Apps on a public art memorial to executed activist Ken Saro-Wiwa

South Africa: Power to the people September 2011
Bobby Peek tells how the struggle for environmental rights is intertwined with the one over access to energy

Voices from the Tunisian Revolution May 2011
Amanda Sebystyen profiles individuals who participated in the Tunisian revolution, and their stories

Dispatches from Tunisia May 2011
Amanda Sebestyen reports from a solidarity visit to Tunisia organised through the World Social Forum

Revolt like an Egyptian April 2011
Tahrir Square activist Gigi Ibrahim shares her experience of overthrowing a dictator

Brothers unbanned April 2011
Mansoor Mirza on the Muslim Brotherhood

Egypt: Ammar 404 April 2011
The internet and the Arab uprisings. By Zahera Harb

Tweets from Tahrir April 2011
How the Egyptian revolution unfolded on Twitter

A vicarious potency April 2011
In the case of Libya, liberal interventionists ignore the history of imperialism and the realities of power, writes Mike Marqusee

Libyan Developments: interview with Gilbert Achcar March 2011
Gilbert Archar interviewed by Stephen R. Shalom about the situation in Libya.

Libya: war is not the answer March 2011
Phyllis Bennis argues that foreign military intervention in Libya has little to do with humanitarian concerns, and protracted militarization could threaten the country's chance for real democratic development.

Organising on the edge March 2011
Caroline Elliot reports on a wave of grass-roots organising in sub-Saharan Africa bringing together workers in the informal economy

Revolution on the Nile: Lessons for Africa February 2011
The importance of the Egyptian and Tunisian uprisings for sub-Saharan Africa should not be overlooked, says Nicolo Gnecchi.

The first lesson from the Egyptian revolution February 2011
Salwa Ismail on the fall of the Mubarak regime, and the new politics emerging in Egypt

Where next for Egypt? A roundup February 2011
Red Pepper rounds up the best commentary and analysis on the situation in Egypt after the fall of Mubarak.

Egyptian activist speaks: ‘This is only the beginning’ February 2011
Waseem Wagdi: 'I have seen a new humanity being born in Tahrir Square'

The EU’s ‘orderly transition’ February 2011
Leigh Phillips on Catherine Ashton and the EU's response to the uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia.

‘Our victory belongs to our young generation’ January 2011
Red Pepper’s Christine Morderbacher spoke to five Tunisians about recent events and the hopes they have for their country.

Tunisians break 23 years of silence January 2011
After years of repression in the name of the war on terror, Tunisians are using the internet to exercise their freedom of speech. Christine Moderbacher reports.

Small country, big struggle August 2010
Mike Marqusee has just returned from a visit with trade unionists and democracy activists in Swaziland

South Africa’s own goal June 2010
As football fans worldwide turn their attention towards South Africa, Ashwin Desai and Patrick Bond look at what impact hosting the World Cup is having on the world's most unequal large country

Contracts to corrupt April 2010
Angola has been going through a process of widespread privatisation apparently at odds with the ruling party's left-wing reputation. Justin Pearce spoke to Rafael Marques, a campaigning journalist in the country

Coming out in Kenya August 2009
Pauline Kimani is one of Kenya's few openly lesbian women. Interview by Arusha Topazzini

Contending for the living May 2009
In the first of a new regular column for Red Pepper, Mike Marqusee finds hope for a new internationalism in the actions of South African dockworkers and their allies

Dirty gold is a family affair January 2009
Nyasha del Campo, the daughter of Zimbabwe's acting president Joice Mujuru, is accused of trying to set up a deal involving illegal gold, Makusha Mugabe reports

Win one day December 2008
Joaquin Nzuzi Mbambi is UK general secretary of Abako, the oldest anti-colonial party in the Congo. He escaped the country six years ago after a crackdown on the outlawed group and has been seeking asylum in the UK ever since

We, the people of Zimbabwe August 2008
In the past, Zimbabweans have looked to African heads of state to support their struggle for democracy. But in the face of their refusal to act, civil society organisations are considering more direct kinds of action. Mary Ndlovu writes from Zimbabwe

Hope in dark times April 2008
The peace agreement between the Kenyan president Mwai Kibaki and opposition leader Raila Odinga achieves calm but not peace. Meanwhile, many Kenyans are trying to make peace themselves. Ewa Jasiewicz talks to some of those involved

Wake up and smell the roses April 2008
Campaigners are exposing the conditions that predominantly women workers suffer in Kenya to bring cheap cut flowers to western Europe, writes Siobhan McGuirk

Sons of the Clouds December 2007
More than 30 years since the end of Spanish colonial rule, the Sahrawi people are still awaiting self-determination and an end to Moroccan occupation. Toby Shelley reports from Mauritania, where a forgotten Sahwari population lives in a permanent state of transit

The foul stench of Firestone June 2007
Slavery isn't dead, writes Robtel Neajai Pailey. Its modern-day variant is just found on a different kind of plantation

The war on terror comes to Africa February 2007
There are echoes of Afghanistan in the Horn of Africa, writes Nick Dearden. Will a quick victory for a foreign-backed warlord government be followed by further instability and an Islamist insurgency?

Plunder and war October 2006
With around four million dead and the country in the hands of competing warlords, the Democratic Republic of Congo (formerly Zaire) has seen the world's worst conflict in the past decade. David Renton and Leo Zeilig see little cause for optimism in the recent multiparty elections

Mau Mau and the British Newspapers July 2004
In these days of the rehabilitation of the language of "liberal imperialism", it is important to recall that empire can be an expensive undertaking, and overseas involvement must be justified to an electorate arguably more interested in the mundane infrastructure of a welfare state for example.

Background to Rwanda May 2004
Ten years ago, beginning on 6 April 1994, more than one million Rwandans were massacred in a three-month bloodbath. The dead were mainly Tutsis, the minority ethnic group in Rwanda who made up about 14 percent of the then eight million population. All were unarmed civilians. Their killers, extremists from Rwanda's ruling Hutu majority, had embarked on a premeditated mission: to exterminate an entire people. But it was not only Tutsis who suffered. Tens of thousands of moderate Hutus were also slaughtered because they were political opponents of the one-party Hutu state and natural obstacles to the genocide.

Senegalese workers bet against lottery privatisation May 2004
Up to 1000 protestors coursed through the streets of Dakar in April 2004 to protest against a plan aimed at privatising the Senegalese national lottery, LONASE. The protest took place on the same day that the World Bank announced the cancellation of $850m dollars of Senegal's debt.

Uncovering the financiers of the genocide May 2004
Ten years ago, beginning on 6 April 1994, more than one million Rwandans were massacred in a three-month bloodbath. The dead were mainly Tutsis, the minority ethnic group in Rwanda who made up about 14 percent of the then eight million population.

South Africa’s faded rainbow May 2004
Despite the ANC's record landslide in April's South African general elections, there is growing domestic resistance to the party's lurch to the right.

From bloodbath to whitewash March 2004
April 2004 is the tenth anniversary of the genocide that killed a million Rwandans. Mark Curtis describes Britain's role in the slaughter