Governance

Nigeria is going to the polls to elect a president in less than one week. Understandably, there is a high level of apprehension, hence American President Barack Obama’s intervention in calling for a fair and peaceful election.

Let's play a guessing game. Guess who emphatically warned the mighty Zimbabwe Republic Police not to harass vendors? Is it Japhet Moyo the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions Secretary General? Or perhaps Mai Chisamba the people-centred talk show host?

All three major political parties in Tanzania today have militias. For the ruling party, CCM [Chama cha Mapinduzi, Party of the Revolution), that phenomenon isn`t new.

As the harsh sun baked the earth, no less scorching the grass, this one Saturday in Addis-Ababa, Ethiopia, from late afternoon hours into the evening was for Ethiopian Classics.

A systematic move to drop presidential terms limit to allow the incumbent Paul Kagame to run for the same office after his two constitutional terms expire in 2017 has gained momentum in Rwanda.

The African National Congress is not the party it used to be. Jacob Zuma, now into his second term as President of South Africa, is spearheading a new movement in South African politics.

Although the national reconciliation process is a fiasco, the deeply fractured Ivory Coast is mulling a presidential election in 2015. The subject is raising a lot of controversies as some argue that a presidential election is inappropriate and others claim that it would end the current crisis.

After the unprecedented shift of the date of the general elections in Nigeria from 14 February to 28 March, many Nigerians are highly expectant. Plenty of people are arguing for and against both the All Progressives Party (APC) and the Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP).

[EDITOR’S NOTE: Ruth Mumbi, a human rights defender in a Nairobi slum, delivered this speech during the International Parliamentary Conference on Human Rights in the Modern Day Commonwealth at West Minster London, United Kingdom, on 4 February 2015.">

OAKLAND, CA — Every spring for the last fifteen years, the World Bank has organized the “Conference on Land and Poverty,” which brings together corporations, governments and civil society groups. The aim is ostensibly to discuss how to “improve land governance.”