Kris Berwouts

Jan 23, 2025 | africanarguments.org | Eliab Taye |Kris Berwouts |Richard Dowden

Debating Ideas reflects the values and editorial ethos of the African Arguments book series, publishing engaged, often radical, scholarship, original and activist writing from within the African continent and beyond. It offers debates and engagements, contexts and controversies, and reviews and responses flowing from the African Arguments books. It is edited and managed by the International African Institute, hosted at SOAS University of London, the owners of the book series of the same name.

Dec 5, 2023 | africanarguments.org | James Wan |Kris Berwouts

The COP28 climate talks in Dubai are scheduled to run from 30 November to 12 December. At the halfway point, we unpick the progress (and lack thereof) so far in terms of the key priorities of African and many other developing countries. AdaptationIf climate change were a fire working its way through a building, then attempts to slow its spread before it gets too far would be mitigation. Attempts to survive and adapt amid the fire would be adaptation.

Nov 29, 2023 | africanarguments.org | Mary Serumaga |Kris Berwouts |On Darfur |Aly Verjee

“Zionism will fail, the experiment to which the noble Earl referred will fail, the harm done by dumping down an alien population upon an Arab country – Arab all around in the hinterland – may never be remedied…what we have done is, by concessions, not to the Jewish people but to a Zionist extreme section, to start a running sore in the East, and no one can tell how far that sore will extend.”– British Government, Hansard, House of Lords, 21 June 1922, p.

Aug 11, 2023 | africanarguments.org | David Njagi |Kris Berwouts |Kagondu Njagi

Each morning, Beatrice Kananu, 32, rises with the spirit of a hunter-gatherer ready to claim the day. She gathers up her tools – in her case, disposed polythene sheets that she has gathered from nearby garbage sites and cleaned in preparation – and leaves her home, in the village of Mutuati on the outskirts of the Nyambene Hills in Central Kenya. Before long, she reaches the woods from which she will harvest a crucial resource: water.

Jul 14, 2023 | africanarguments.org | Percy Zvomuya |Kris Berwouts |Hassan Abukar

After five decades on the stage, one of the continent’s great musical innovators, and an outspoken critic of corrupt politics, takes his last bow – in exile, because it was too dangerous to go home. Of all my records by Zimbabwean musicians, the one I treasure the most is Thomas Mapfumo’s crackly 7-inch single with “Kuyaura” on side A and “Zvanyadza” on the flip side.