Comment & analysis

The latest terrorist attack on Somalia’s presidential palace comes less than 10 days from another daylight suicide attack on a UN convoy near Mogadishu’s airport.

What some Nigerians prefer to call Sanusigate signposts how naïve, power drunken and desperate that Nigeria’s presidency has become.

January 2014 marks the 50th commemoration of the assassination of Patrice Emery Lumumba. Lumumba was one of the greatest forces behind the wrestling of independence from the unwilling hands of Belgian colonizers of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

In less than two months’ time, the world will be marking the 20th anniversary of the worst genocide seen in Africa since the end of colonialism -- the Rwanda pogrom that began on 6 April 1994.

On 6 February, 2014, Ursula von der Leyen, the German Defense Minister, stepped into the Sahel’s crisis with a more assertive German ambition in world security hotspots.

After a long time of disappointing many people, the African Union [AU"> has given some hope that it can defend and protect African interests without fear from the intimidation of imperialist countries.

“No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.”The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Art.

Mainstream Western media, specially the powerful commercial outlets, may be partly responsible for the wrong conflict diagnostics in Africa and elsewhere in the developing world over the past half a century.

In the context of Somali political culture and discourse, it should be clear by now that the meaning of the principle of ‘federalism in Somalia’ is completely different from the one of political power decentralization for governance explored in the legal and political literature.

“Resisting is pointless,” we hear endlessly repeated. “So many years of protest but the crisis continues, why bother?” insist others, inoculating us with apathy and resignation. “Protests could lead to something that’s even worse,” whispers the machinery of fear.