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2 weeks ago | 
africanistperspective.com | Ken Opalo
Thank you for being a regular reader of An Africanist Perspective. If you haven’t done so yet, please hit subscribe to receive timely updates along with over 24,000 other subscribers. Amid the turmoil in global markets caused by America’s protectionist turn, there have been attempts across Africa to put a positive spin to the chaos.
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4 weeks ago | 
africanistperspective.com | Ken Opalo
Thank you for being a regular reader of An Africanist Perspective. If you haven’t done so yet, please hit subscribe to receive timely updates along with over 23,000 other subscribers. This post answers two questions. First, why are African international organizations (IOs) so weak? Given the weakness of many of the region’s states, shouldn’t it be possible for the Continent’s interstate organizations to dictate and enforce collective policies?
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1 month ago | 
africanistperspective.com | Ken Opalo
This is the fourth post on the impacts of aid cuts on African states; and the urgent need to grow out of aid dependency in the region. The first three posts are available here, here, and here. See also the excellent posts from Gyude Moore and Grieve Chelwa on the same topic. This post should be read as a pep talk for these difficult times.
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Jan 24, 2025 | 
africanistperspective.com | Ken Opalo
Thank you for being a regular reader of An Africanist Perspective. If you haven’t done so yet, please hit subscribe to receive timely updates. As an estimated 50,000 people gather in Baku for COP29 (at which delegates hope to converge on concrete guidelines for climate finance), it’s important to highlight a few things about the political economy of climate change and development.
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Jan 24, 2025 | 
africanistperspective.com | Ken Opalo
Thank you for being a regular reader of An Africanist Perspective. If you haven’t done so yet, hit subscribe to join 17,000 others and to receive timely updates. This post is more of a pamphlet than my normal commentary here, and was triggered by a number of conversations I had following this year’s Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) summit in Beijing.
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Dec 6, 2024 | 
africanistperspective.com | Ken Opalo
Thank you for being a regular reader of An Africanist Perspective. If you haven’t done so yet, please hit subscribe to receive timely updates. This post explores how Trump’s stated intention to remake the American foreign policy toolkit will impact Africa-U.S. relations. It’s a follow up to the post before the 2024 U.S. presidential election in which I shared thoughts on the potential directions of Washington’s Africa policy conditional on the outcome.
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Aug 28, 2024 | 
africanistperspective.com | Ken Opalo
Thank you for being a regular reader of An Africanist Perspective. If you haven’t done so yet, please hit subscribe in order to receive timely updates. Given the many hardships currently buffeting Nigerian households, President Bola Tinubu’s Biya-esque travel to southern France for a few days in a new $100m jet did not make for good optics. His office euphemistically called the trip a “work stay,” which presumably he couldn’t do anywhere in Nigeria.
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Aug 16, 2024 | 
africanistperspective.com | Ken Opalo
Thank you for being a regular reader of An Africanist Perspective. If you haven’t done so yet, please hit subscribe in order to receive timely updates. There is a reason Sudan’s peace talks are (likely?) going to happen in Geneva (and Jeddah before that) and not in an African capital. So before discussing the geopolitics of the conflict in Sudan, it’s worth highlighting the failures of the African Union and other regional organizations.
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Jul 30, 2024 | 
africanistperspective.com | Ken Opalo
This is the third of a three part series on the current economic and political crises in Kenya. Part One addresses the political foundations of the crisis. Part Two will tackles the real economic challenges that the current administration inherited, and arguably made worse. Finally, Part Three concludes with some thoughts on the set of bad options on the table for the administration. There are no easy policy options out of Kenya’s fiscal crisis.
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Jul 30, 2024 | 
africanistperspective.com | Ken Opalo
This is the second of a three part series on the current economic and political crises in Kenya. Part One addresses the political foundations of the crisis. Part Two will tackle the real economic challenges that the current administration inherited, and arguably made worse. Finally, Part Three will conclude with some thoughts on the set of bad options on the table for the administration.