Africa Is a Country

1 week ago | africasacountry.com | William Shoki |Sean Jacobs

In today’s multipolar world, economic sanctions have become a primary tool of American foreign policy. While they are typically framed as nonviolent targeted mechanisms for influencing “rogue” regimes, a deeper inspection suggests that sanctions operate as instruments of civilizational warfare—seeking not only to alter policy but to dismantle the cultural coherence and sovereign legitimacy of states in the Global South.

1 week ago | africasacountry.com | Kangsen Wakai |Mohamed Keita

To understand Paul Biya’s seemingly interminable tenure, one must first understand Cameroon, its neighbors, and Biya himself. Despite over four decades in office, he remains an enigmatic figure to many Cameroonians, including his own ministers—an observer who is rarely observed. His speeches are highly scripted, his protocols rigid, and he rarely grants interviews; the last interview he had with a local journalist was in 2002.

1 week ago | africasacountry.com | Ali Khan

Thirty-one years after the fall of administrative apartheid, South Africa stands at an uneasy juncture between the promise of a rights-based democracy and the lived reality of widespread inequality, bureaucratic inertia, and eroded public trust. The 1996 Constitution enshrined administrative justice—the right to lawful, reasonable, and procedurally fair decisions by public bodies—and elevated human dignity as a foundational value.

4 weeks ago | africasacountry.com | Nalova Akua

Sisiku Julius Ayuk Tabe still vividly remembers one random act of kindness during his 44-day lonely stay at the dreaded State Defence Secretariat detention facility in Cameroon’s political capital, Yaoundé, in 2018: the gift of a Bible. A rare, unexpected gift which helped him weather the ill treatment inflicted on him. “The Bible became my sole companion in the cell—it strengthened my faith and spirit and made me even stronger,” Sisiku Ayuk Tabe tells Africa Is a Country.

4 weeks ago | africasacountry.com | Christopher J. Lee |Nathan Yardy |Vanessa Burger |Sean Jacobs

South Africa’s swerve from liberation to bungling kleptocracy is not unique—the United States is in the throes of an analogous meltdown—but the speed and extent of that unraveling continue to both perplex and prefigure thinking about the prospects for recovery. The latest book by Vishwas Satgar, one of South Africa’s leading figures on the left, is a trove for anyone seeking a clearer understanding of the country’s hobbled efforts to step free of its past and a beacon for seeing past the gloom.