"The elections of 2014 demonstrated a lot of weaknesses in Malawi’s electoral system...which renders it vulnerable to errors that can conceivably undermine completely the credibility of elections conducted in Malawi’s future. A…
Latest posts - Page 49
Research and Practice
Ushahidi Crowdsourcing Platform: A People-Centered Approach to Conflict Transformation in Kenya
by Toyin Ajao
"New media technologies have opened avenues for the African people to participate more directly, and more strategically, in public affairs. A closed door of morbid silence has suddenly been flung wide open, and different people-centered initiatives are emerging as the African general public utilizes these new technologies to address societal issues."
Elections & Governance
Article 46A Bis: A Step Backward in Ending Impunity in Africa
by Dan Kuwali
"If this retrogressive provision comes into force, the survivors and victims of atrocities will have no option but to seek justice and reparation from elsewhere—in this case, the ICC, which still has jurisdiction to try perpetrators of mass atrocities, regardless of official position—thereby defeating the principle of 'African solutions to African problems.' "
Research and Practice
Kenya’s Long-Term Security Should Be a “Discursive Project”
by Fredrick Ogenga
"Terrorism is a constructed ideology. For it to be defeated in Kenya and elsewhere, we need to construct a counter-ideology through an equally discursive process...Yet creating an effective counter-ideology, like the 'We Are One' campaign, requires a reconstruction of identity and an answer to the question, Who is really a Kenyan, and who is not?"
Elections & Governance
Democracy versus Stability: Political Reconciliation and the Government of National Unity in Zanzibar
by Dr. Nicodemus Minde
"Race, political economy, social classes, the struggle for democracy, the question of unity, and proximate factors such as leadership have all been cited by scholars as causes of political instability in Zanzibar. To understand political reconciliation in the region, however, one needs to approach the problem from the perspective of actors, interests, and strategies for peace."
Essays
Post-M23 Euphoria and the Recurrent Peace Dividends in Eastern DRC
by Christoph Vogel
“The examples of M23 and ADF showcase the positive potential of decisive peace enforcement, but neither the unsatisfactory ‘peace agreement’ following the FARDC-FIB success against M23, nor the atomization of ADF into much less powerful but persistent micro-units, are long-term solutions .... [T]he quest for peace needs to be understood as a molecular process involving at least as much of a bottom-up as a top-down logic.”
Radar
Insurgents and Terror in Jos, Nigeria: Where Next?
by Chris Kwaja
"As national and international attention is mainly focused on Sambisa forest in the search for the girls that were abducted by Boko Haram from Chibok in Borno State, it is important not to overlook the dire fact that other parts of Nigeria are vulnerable to coordinated attacks by Boko Haram. It happened in Kano and Plateau State—but there is no telling where it will happen next."
Essays
A Beleaguered Political Marriage: The Tanganyika-Zanzibar Union and the Constitution Process in Tanzania