The Building Bridges Initiative is best understood by recognising that Kenyan politics is fundamentally shaped by competition between political elites and their ethnic groups.
Nigeria’s Independent National Electoral Commission recently deregistered some political parties, leading to debates over whether this was a step in the right direction.
Kenya’s Supreme Court upholds President Uhuru Kenyatta’s election victory following a re-run in 2017.
EFE-EPA/Daniel Irungu
By pushing their usually valid complaints onto the streets and the courts, opposition leaders deny governments the popular goodwill and international credibility they need to govern effectively.
Peter Mutharika during his inauguration as the President of Malawi last May. A court has annnulled his election.
Amos Gumulira/AFP via Getty Images
The independent strategic review, now before the Security Council, recognises many of the challenges ahead. But it appears overly sanguine about what can be achieved within a three-year period.
Namibian president Hage Geingob.
EPA/Siphiwe Sibeko
The unstable authoritarian pathway that many post-colonial African states followed was facilitated by the way in which European empires undermined democratic elements within African societies.
A woman casts her ballot in Guinea’s presidential elections in the capital Conakry, in October 2015.
EPA/STR
Western perceptions of what’s happening in Tunisia differ sharply with Tunisia’s daily reality: the truth is that its political transformation is in trouble.
South Africans who receive welfare grants vote for the governing African National Congress more than any other party.
EPA-EFE/Kim Ludbrook
The election’s result endorses other evidence that trust in South Africa’s constitutional settlement and its political institutions is steadily declining.
Chief Research Specialist in Democracy and Citizenship at the Human Science Research Council and a Research Fellow Centre for African Studies, University of the Free State