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Africa

What The World Can Learn From Radical Queer Aid Collectives

One of the 26 executive orders Donald Trump signed on the first day of his presidency was a 90-day pause on foreign aid, which he said is often “not aligned with American interests”. The subsequent suspension of overseas aid programmes has hit vulnerable communities around the world, with LGBTIQ+ organisations in the Global South among the worst affected. But three East African queer mutual aid groups were well-prepared for this scenario, and have a model that could help organisations reeling from Trump’s actions. Since their inception, The Trans and Queer Fund and UmaUma Buy Nothing group, both based in Kenya, and an untitled queer collective in Uganda have organised themselves to be independent from foreign donors, which they say do not understand the realities of the communities they serve.

25 Days Of Debt-Service Payments Could Emancipate African Women From 40 Billion Hours Of Water Harvesting

March is the month of International Working Women’s Day, a day deeply rooted in the socialist movement. Most of the world now only calls 8 March ‘International Women’s Day’, excluding the word ‘working’ from its title. But work is a fundamental part of women’s daily lives. According to UN Women’s annual report Progress on the Sustainable Development Goals: The Gender Snapshot 2024, 63.3% of women worldwide participated in the labour force in 2022. However, due to the appalling state of social protections and labour regimes, by 2024 nearly 10% of women were living in extreme poverty.

The Chris Hedges Report: The World After Gaza

The Holocaust is the quintessential example of human evil for people in the West. In the rest of the world, especially in the Global South, the atrocity of the Holocaust — genocide — has had a closer proximity both in time and place. Colonialism in Africa, destructive wars in Asia and most recently, genocide in the Middle East, have shaped the lives of billions of people. On this episode of The Chris Hedges Report, essayist and novelist Pankaj Mishra joins host Chris Hedges to discuss his latest book, “The World After Gaza.” Mishra argues that the shifting power dynamics in the world means the Global South’s narrative on atrocity can no longer be ignored and the genocide in Gaza is the current crux of the issue.

Trump Or Not, Africa Must Take Charge Of Its Future

For decades, Africa’s relationship with the US has been shaped largely by foreign aid, security partnerships, and economic ties that have fostered dependence rather than mutual benefit. Now, under Trump’s “renewed” leadership, this dynamic is being called into question, especially as his policies begin to impact critical sectors such as health, education, and security, causing unease across the continent. On January 20, Trump announced a 90-day freeze on USAID funding, halting essential services and sparking outrage across the world.

US War On Africa Rages On With Somalia In The Crosshairs

The new Trump administration has wasted no time continuing the U.S. war on Africa. Just one month into his second term, the U.S. has launched at least six airstrikes in Somalia’s Puntland region. While AFRICOM and the Somali government claim these strikes are “authorized” and therefore legal under international law, this so-called authorization is nothing more than a hallmark of neo-colonial governance. Comprador regimes installed and maintained by Western imperialism do not exercise genuine sovereignty but instead serve as facilitators of foreign domination.

We Stand With The People Of The Congo

Rwanda is a proxy for Western interests in the mineral-rich Great Lakes region. Its military is armed by the United States, United Kingdom, France, the European Union, and supported by other proxies like Uganda. It is closely aligned to Israel and its intelligence and military are equipped with Israeli-made spyware and weapons. Paul Kagame, Rwanda’s president, remains a key ally of the West even as his regime surveils, jails, tortures, disappears and assassinates critics; seizes sovereign territory; and violates the most fundamental norms of international law.

US Imperialism’s Latest Plot Against The Democratic Republic Of Congo

Imperialist aggression against the DRC is rapidly expanding and hundreds of thousands of people continue to flee their homelands, while towns fall one by one into the hands of imperialist forces. The people are living in a situation of chaos and despair, deprived of security and essential resources such as housing, food and medicine. The Congolese people, who have long suffered the horrors of war, bloody conflict and the atrocities of colonization, are plunging into an even darker period. To fully understand the current situation in the Congo, we need to take a closer look at history.

BRICS Expands To 54.6% Of World Population By Adding Nigeria

BRICS continues to grow. On 17 January, it officially admitted Nigeria as a new partner country. Nigeria has the world’s sixth-largest population, with the biggest population on the African continent. In addition to being Africa’s second-largest economy, Nigeria is the number one oil producer on the continent. With the addition of Nigeria, BRICS now has 10 full members and nine partners. At the BRICS summit in Kazan, Russia in 2024, the organization adopted a comprehensive plan to transform the international monetary and financial system, by challenging the dominance of the US dollar and promoting trade and settlement in local currencies. Together, the extended BRICS+ group represents 54.6% of the world population.

How Congolese Climate Activists Stopped A ‘Carbon Bomb,’ For Now

“I was very angry. I was astonished. Everything I saw was stolen,” said François Kamate, an environmental activist from the Democratic Republic of Congo, or DRC. He was describing how it felt to enter the Royal Museum for Central Africa in Belgium for the first time. The museum was built in a rich suburb of Brussels to showcase the spoils after King Leopold II declared a vast swath of Central Africa, including the entire present day DRC, to be his own private kingdom. What resulted was one of the most vicious and exploitative episodes of European colonial history, and the funneling of 10,000,000 zoological specimens and 120,000 cultural objects into the museum’s collection.

Resist, My People, Resist

Pain shudders through the arteries of global society. Day after day passes by as the genocide against the Palestinian people continues and the conflicts in the Great Lakes region of Africa and Sudan escalate. More and more people slip into absolute poverty as arms companies’ profits soar. These realities have hardened society, allowing people to bury their heads and ignore the horrors unfolding across the world. Ferocious disregard for the pain of others has become a way to protect oneself from the inflation of suffering. What can one do with the wretchedness that has come to define life across the planet?

Mathare Ecological Network Fights For Restoration Of Dignity And Hope

In April 2024, relentless heavy rains wreaked havoc across Kenya, plunging the country into a humanitarian crisis. The devastation claimed at least 270 lives, displaced over 200,000 people, and obliterated livelihoods, infrastructure, and property. Among the hardest-hit areas was Mathare, one of Nairobi’s largest informal settlements, where over 40 lives were lost as the Mathare River burst its banks, flooding vast portions of the community. For the residents of Mathare, mostly low-income earners, the flooding was catastrophic. Families were stranded, homes were submerged, and lives were uprooted in the blink of an eye.

The Eighth Continent Is The Continent Of Sleaze

The eighth continent is the Continent of Sleaze. You and I have never been there, only heard rumours about it. On that continent, there are rivers of money in which corporate executives bathe and from which they extract whatever they want in order to increase their power, privilege, and property. The corporate executives venture out to lay their hands on the wealth of the world and carry it back to their Continent of Sleaze. What remains is dust and shadows, barely enough for people to survive so that they can continue to labour and produce more social wealth for the Continent of Sleaze.

Africa And Russia: The Anti-Imperialist Partnership For Our Future

Neo-colonial governments have been toppled in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger (henceforth “the Alliance of Sahel States”). Revolutionary governments, backed by popular movements, have seized power and resurrected the flame of revolution in Africa. From the outbreaks of the rebellions that toppled neo-colonialism to today, it is common to see the people raising Russian flags along their national flags. For Africans, Russia represents a win-win cooperation and a partner against Western hegemony. Despite Western media’s desperate strategy to paint Russia as an imperial power and a colonial force that Africans should be wary of, a thorough study of history and a proper understanding of imperialism demonstrates that Russia has never been an imperialist or a colonial force in Africa, nor is it now.

France Must Go From Africa Is The Slogan Of The Hour

A cascade of anti-French sentiment continues to sweep across the belt of the Sahel in Africa: joining Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger, Chad and Senegal demanded in November that the French government withdraw its military from their territories. From the western border of Sudan to the Atlantic Ocean, French armed forces, which have been in the area since 1659, will no longer have a base. The statement by the foreign minister of Chad, Abderaman Koulamallah, is exemplary: ‘France… must now also consider that Chad has grown up, matured, and that Chad is a sovereign state that is very jealous of its sovereignty’.

Delegation From Alliance Of Sahel States Visits Cuba

From November 8 to 15, twelve people from the countries of the Sahel visited Cuba to meet with Cuban people who carry forward the revolutionary project, and learn about Cuba’s socialist model and deep friendship with the peoples of Africa. The delegation sought to learn lessons from Cuba’s decades-long revolution to help advance the new revolutions being constructed in the Sahel. This was the first delegation of Africans traveling to Cuba from the Alliance of Sahel States (AES), a Pan-African anti-imperialist confederation consisting of Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger.