Guest Columns

From my motherland, Ghana to the rolling plains of the Serengeti, from the Cape of Good Hope to Tunis, the birthplace of Hannibal besieging the Mediterranean Sea, for the past 7 years I have watched Africa nurse itself to health. A rude and vibrant health on the cusp of accelerated growth, like seeing the first green shoots after a long drought.

In as much as The Mo Ibrahim Prize for Achievement in African Leadership (MIPAAL) is there to encourage good governance, on the ground it is actually too little and too ineffective to serve as a corruption deterrence. Why not target it towards Africa’s future, its youth?, writes Raymond Eyo.

From the Zimbabwean capital, Harare, Mwalimu Mate-Kole takes issue with Onyekachi Wambu’s December 2012 column in which he suggested that liberation parties in Southern Africa should split and create room for “normal competitive politics to resume”.

As President Barack Obama begins his second term in office (after his inauguration on 21 January), Professor Said Adejumobi looks at the new dynamics shaping American society

On 8 February, the former Nigerian president, Olusegun Obasanjo, will launch his Foundation in London, with a vision of advancing human security for the most disadvantaged in Africa. In this opinion piece, he tells why he is adding one more Foundation to the many we already have in Africa.

How else would one explain why DRCongo, whose conflicts have seen deaths estimated by the UN at 5.5 million to 6 million since 1996, would be such a low priority for the “international community”?

After several years of exile in Paris, the question of returning to my own country, Tunisia, did not simply arise – it was imposed. Today, more than a year after the first free elections in Tunisia, the National Constituent Assembly, which is responsible for providing the country with a new constitution, is struggling to form a genuine democracy, writes Amira Yahyaoui.

A year after the coalition government of Tunisia was elected, and just under two years since Mohamed Bouazizi set himself alight sparking the Arab Spring, Intissar Kherigi, a Tunisian human rights lawyer and activist (and daughter of Ennahda leader Rached Ghannouchi), writes in a personal capacity on the challenges facing Tunisia’s new government.