Reports

The launch of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) has come with high hopes for a boost in economic activity and development. But free trade agreements in themselves are no silver bullet for backward economies. Especially in Africa, institutional reform, infrastructure improvement and the reduction of nontariff barriers will ...

Since the mid-2010s, countries in the Gulf of Guinea have seen an increase in terrorist attacks. Lax border control allows jihadist violence to spread rapidly through preexisting criminal networks. National authorities are taking measures to counter the threat, but the issue will need to be addressed from a regional perspective ...

Sub-Saharan Africa is, according to some measures, the world's most corrupt region. But the picture is decidedly mixed. Some countries have made great strides in fighting graft, while others will remain mired in corrupt systems for years to come. Democratic institutions are an important factor, but so is economic freedom. ...

With this year’s European Parliament elections, the EU may be approaching a watershed moment on migration. Voters and politicians are questioning the fundamental assumptions of globalized approaches like the UN Compact on Migration and the EU Trust Fund for Africa, which may do more to encourage than curb the migrant ...

Bucking the world trend, Africa in 2018 was marked by important advances toward free movement, free trade and closer cooperation between states. The main advances were on the economic front, with the agreement to create a Continental Free Trade Area (CFTA). While trade liberalization has the potential to be transformative ...

Since the collapse of communism, Western powers have kept urging African countries to establish democracies by holding elections. Yet democracy is a complex institution that does not adapt well to multiethnic, impoverished societies – especially when it is imposed from outside. Too often the trappings of centralized democracy have been ...

Europe has a mixed history when it comes to its involvement in Africa. In recent years, it has mostly abandoned its interests there, leaving a vacuum that is being filled by China, Russia and Turkey. European policy toward Africa currently is shortsighted, mainly aiming to address the migration crisis. But ...

Stung by falling commodities prices and growing donor fatigue, many African countries are expanding their tax bases. While at first blush this looks like a good move to liberate their economies from aid and resource dependence, it could also be a recipe for reducing investment and tamping down economic growth.

The national elections in Kenya have thrown the fast-developing east African nation into dangerous instability for the second time in a decade. Its ethnic-based political process is the root problem, the country’s economic outlook is cloudy.

With nearly 40 percent of its population under the age of 18, Africa is the youngest continent in the world. This expanding work-age population should bring higher productivity, increased consumption and faster growth. But turning this workforce into an economic asset will require ending the mismatch between educational outcomes and ...

Poaching in Africa has intensified in recent years, leaving less than half a million elephants on the continent. The flip side of this ecological tragedy is a multibillion-dollar business for criminal and terrorist groups. That makes poaching a geopolitical problem requiring an international response.

The International Criminal Court suffered a major setback when its first case against a sitting head of state collapsed. Kenya’s President Uhuru Kenyatta was indicted for crimes against humanity but critical evidence and witnesses failed to materialise - government complicity, say prosecutors - and the charges were withdrawn in December ...

Kenya’s economic outlook is among the brightest in Africa. Foreign investment in President Uhuru Kenyatta’s nation is booming and business confidence is high since the discovery of oil and gas reserves. However, the terrorist group al-Shabab, responsible for the deadly attack on the Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi in 2013, ...

The Somali-led Islamic militants who attacked a Kenyan shopping centre in September 2013 said they would continue to strike more targets in the country unless Kenya removed its troops from their land. Kenya invaded Somalia in 2011 because of repeated cross-border raids by the militant group, al-Shabab. But it is ...

International courts, organisations such as the European Commission and central banks are now so powerful that there is a danger that they can overrule democratic decisions, especially in weaker countries. The major powers are not affected, but at both legal and economic levels, poor national government policies are leading smaller ...

Uhuru Kenyatta’s has reasons to celebrate, not just for his victory in Kenya’s presidential elections, but for a ruling by the country’s Supreme Court that the election was ‘free and fair’. Now he faces some equally big challenges, most immediately the indictment by the International Criminal Court for crimes against ...

Kenya is about to elect a new president. But there are fears that the country could descend into the same post-election violence that marred the 2007 elections after the results were heavily disputed. There could be a further worry for the country, however. One of the two leading candidate, Uhuru ...

Somalia may be the Afghanistan of Africa, a failed state with a bloody history. Its neighbour Kenya has now intervened with troops following the abduction of foreign aid workers and tourists. Kenya faces a security threat and violence which is having an impact on its tourist trade. KENYA has kept ...

Kenya has been plagued by corruption and President Mwai Kibaki's pledge to root it out has proved unsuccessful. He has to step down at the next elections in 2012 but what has he achieved during his first two terms? GIS expert, Teresa Nogueira Pinto gives this briefing. CORRUPTION cost Kenya’s ...

Kenya's population has doubled in the last 25 years and will double again in the next 40. But education and population movements from rural to urban areas could boost development and lift the country towards its economic goals, says GIS expert Teresa Nogueira Pinto in this special report. KENYA, considered ...

Governments aspiring to meet global education targets could do with looking at the children living in the slums of Kenya, many of whom who are outsmarting their middle class peers, says GIS expert Dr Pauline Dixon. AFRICAN countries have taken advantage of billion-dollar education aid packages to offer all young ...