Reflecting on the need to challenge power and its abuses, Alemayehu G. Mariam encourages young people in Africa to organise, become politically engaged and work together in defence of human rights.

Government officials on a tour of the US failed in their attempts to build diaspora support for Ethiopia’s five-year economic programme, thanks to ‘Zenawi’s tenacious, resolute and dogged opponents’, writes Alemayehu G. Mariam. ‘The diaspora may be divided but not when it comes to Zenawi’s regime.’

An international company has benefitted from a massive handout of land in the Gambella region of Ethiopia. Alemayehu G. Mariam shows what the devastating consequences of the deal will be for local people.

Expressing his disappointment at US President Barack Obama’s unwillingness to criticise despotic African leaders in the same way he did as a senator, Alemayehu G. Mariam discusses the Obama administration’s policy towards Africa.

Alemayehu G. Mariam introduces Africa's leading 'thugtators' - those leaders who cling to power 'solely to accumulate personal wealth for the ruling class'.

It’s true that the Ethiopian ‘political opposition is weak and disunited’, but ‘Western governments seem to be conveniently oblivious of the reasons for the disarray in the opposition’, writes Alemayehu G. Mariam.

Fed up with dictatorships, self-serving elites and totalitarianism, Africa’s youths are on the march, says Alemayehu G. Mariam, inspired by events in Egypt.

In the wake of Tunisia’s popular uprising that last week displaced former president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, Alemayehu G. Mariam looks to Mohandas 'Mahatma' Gandhi for lessons in how to bring down dictatorships.

As South Sudan continues with its referendum, Alemayehu G. Mariam considers what will happen following the south’s probable independence, the longer-term consequences for Sudan and the wider significance for Africa’s direction in the 21st century.

From African-American gospel music to the soul of James Brown, the reggae of Bob Marley and the Afrobeat of Fela Kuti, Alemayehu G. Mariam charts the rich history of protest music and the need for new battle songs to rally around.

Africa’s central problem is that over the past 50 years of independence, it has been ‘nearly impossible’ to hold the continent’s ‘so-called leaders accountable’, argues Alemayehu G. Mariam.

In conversation with Obang Metho, executive director of the Anuak Justice Council and the Solidarity Movement for a New Ethiopia, Alemayehu G. Mariam discusses the forgotten genocide of the Anuak, ‘in solemn anticipation of the seventh anniversary’ of the massacres over the period 13–16 December.

WikiLeaks has helped to shine a light on the web of lies and deceit surrounding US complicity in the 2006 Ethiopian invasion of Somalia, writes Alemayehu G. Mariam.

The question isn’t ‘whether Ethiopians in America have reason to be thankful for the blessings of liberty and the opportunities they have to make material progress’, it is whether they should be thankful to the US for providing billions of dollars to Zenawi’s repressive dictatorship, writes Alemayehu G. Mariam.

While the Ethiopian regime uses its power to keep citizens in darkness, a cadre of young journalists are displaying a courageous commitment to the truth. Alemayehu G. Mariam pays tribute.

Alemayehu G. Mariam remembers the victims of the June and November 2005 massacres in Addis Ababa, where hundreds of people were killed by police for protesting the result of the general election. The author examines the use of police brutality by the government of Meles Zenawi to silence political opposition. He argues that the culture of impunity must stop and that it is imperative that the world continue to bear witness to the killings. ‘The Ethiopian massacre victims now belong to the whole of humanity,’ Mariam writes, remembering the men and women who died. ‘They must be remembered by all freedom-loving peoples throughout the world, not just Ethiopians.’

The Ethiopian government has gone back on their decision to ban distance learning programmes. Alemayehu G. Mariam says the lessons that should be learnt include a respect for the rule of law and the need for rational policy-making.

Western donors continue to hand out billions of dollars in ‘humanitarian’ and ‘economic’ aid to Ethiopia’s Zenawi regime each year, turning a blind eye to the fact that their handouts are propping up a repressive dictatorship, writes Al Mariam.

Alemayehu Mariam keeps coming back to Pambazuka News in his search for informed analysis on African current affairs. While Western countries have think tanks to debate important issues, Africans have Pambazuka News, he writes in his letter to celebrate Pambazuka News’ 500th issue.

Alemayehu Mariam celebrates the release of Ethiopian judge and rights campaigner Birtukan Mideksa.