COLUMNISTS

By Andrew M. Mwenda How Rwanda is defying the established mechanisms of organizing politics in Africa and why it is succeeding Last week, we were at the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) for a two-day conference on Rwanda. It always amazes me how this small …

By Peter Nyanzi It’s always a good sign when the President returns from abroad and camps at Nakasero instead of Entebbe President Yoweri Museveni and journalists clearly like meeting at his Nakasero residence more than at State House Entebbe. The homelike environment – in which he spent decades before the …

By Agencies HIV/Aids experts says American recommendation is `immoral’ Activists in Uganda, where some 400 people are infected with HIV every day, have called on the government to rethink its dismissal of an emerging prevention protocol demonstrated to be effective in a trial conducted partly in Uganda, and which has …

By Andrew M. Mwenda Another look at Africa’s patron-client relations and the peasant moral universe Sometime in 2003, I visited the late former Zambian president Fredrick Chiluba at his palatial home in Lusaka’s rich suburb of Kablong and we sat down over a meal of rice, chapatti and wild game. …

By Ben Rawlence The Westgate attack should spur Kenya’s leaders to re-think their approach toward Somalia The attack that killed more than 70 people at Nairobi’s Westgate shopping mall on Sept.21 was, according to al-Shabaab, the Somali Islamist militant group that carried it out, retribution for Kenya’s intervention in Somalia. …

By Bob Kasango Such attacks show why the world must widen the frontiers of freedom and promote democracy In May 2011, soon after the killing of the leader of Al Qaeda, Osama Bin Laden, in Pakistan by US Special Forces, the Economist Magazine ran a special feature titled, “Now, kill …

By Andrew M. Mwenda How the US president has swallowed his idealism and transformed from a critic of his Ugandan counterpart into an ally Barack Obama’s election as president of the United States in 2008 was a moment of great hope. It is difficult to recapture the emotional tone of …

By Barbara Unmuessig Putting a price tag on ecosystem services could lead to adverse financialisation of nature Today, few people retain any illusions that United Nations conventions like the Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Convention on Biological Diversity can avert global warming, the loss of biodiversity, and the …

By Silver Bugingo Disguised xenophobia against presumed Rwandans has put their alliance under the spotlight When Joseph Kabila, (apparently, upon advice from Jakaya Kiwete and Jocob Zuma) convinced the UN Security Council to establish a “Special Intervention Brigade” to the DRC Eastern Juggles, it was like a soccer hat-trick score …

By Joseph Bossa It would improve matters a bit if land registries desist from issuing multiple titles over one piece of land Despite numerous government interventions to stop them, evictions from land continue apace all over the country. Armed with guns, some land owners, usually new ones, chase occupants off …