The chainsaw feels an inadequate metaphor for the brutal violence with which the Trump administration slashes €58 billion annually from aid to poor countries. On top of that, European governments in the United Kingdom, France, and the Netherlands are cutting more than €10 billion in aid savings. This represents a catastrophic blow to the fight against malaria and HIV/AIDS, food assistance programs, and democratic development. The number of human lives lost to these reckless and inhumane decisions...
The chainsaw feels an inadequate metaphor for the brutal violence with which the Trump administration slashes €58 billion annually from aid to poor...
In a time of hate, missiles, and mass murders, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s call to mingle and meet, made recently at a symposium at the Royal Palace in Amsterdam, comes as a wake-up call. Her speech is a tribute to Amsterdam, the city celebrating its 750th anniversary this year. It is a tribute to the city in general, a centre of energy where different human beings come together, exchange ideas, and belong. Listen to Adichie's speech here .
In a time of hate, missiles, and mass murders, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s call to mingle and meet, made recently at a symposium at the Royal Palace in...
Update: Just as we were finalising this piece, yet another tragedy struck. The violence we thought we were remembering came crashing back into the present. On June 7–8, 2025, while in police custody in Nairobi, 31-year-old Kenyan teacher and activist Albert Ojwang died under suspicious circumstances after publicly accusing a senior police official of corruption. The official story? That he banged his head against a wall. The autopsy told a different truth: signs of strangulation, blunt force...
Update: Just as we were finalising this piece, yet another tragedy struck. The violence we thought we were remembering came crashing back into the...
African despots will tell you, "Put up with my torture, or the colonialists will return to torture you." On May 23, 2025, former Ugandan journalist—and now political commentator and government acolyte—Andrew Mwenda posted a lengthy rant on X, accusing European ambassadors in Uganda of engaging in “Colonialism 101.” His outburst was prompted by a statement made two days earlier, in which European Union ambassadors expressed concern about the use of torture in Uganda. Specifically, a delegation of...
African despots will tell you, "Put up with my torture, or the colonialists will return to torture you." On May 23, 2025, former Ugandan journalist—and...
In the 2025 Ranking of Most Popular Countries, recently released by the Alliance of Democracies , South Africa ranked seventh . The metric measures “how countries are perceived by their neighbours, key trading partners, and other nations” on issues such as credibility and global trust. South African opinion maker and tech consultant Phumzile van Damme shared this striking result on LinkedIn at a time when U.S. President Trump and a surrounding coterie of South African apartheid beneficiaries had...
In the 2025 Ranking of Most Popular Countries, recently released by the Alliance of Democracies , South Africa ranked seventh . The metric measures “how...
On what it means for a stranger to touch your hair in a public space. About six months after you arrive on this island called Australia, you decide to take an afternoon for yourself. Your children are small, and they need you so much, but you have needs too. You are tired. Your partner says, “Go, I will deal with the kids. Pamper yourself.” You want only solitude, which you finally understand as the ultimate luxury. You want to wander and not have anyone ask you for things. You are homesick and...
On what it means for a stranger to touch your hair in a public space. About six months after you arrive on this island called Australia, you decide to...
Like the Kantamanto Market, the government continues to suffer from the same recurring fires In a remarkable comeback to serve a final term as president, former Ghanaian leader John Mahama is now promising Ghanaians a “reset” after years in the political wilderness. However, he is sticking to the same roadmap that led his immediate predecessors astray. Delali Adogla-Bessa advocates a new path. The first major news item of 2025 in Ghana was the fire that razed large parts of the Kantamanto market in...
Like the Kantamanto Market, the government continues to suffer from the same recurring fires In a remarkable comeback to serve a final term as president,...
Mass mortality due to the cessation of aid. Economic subjugation through import tariffs. Tighter visa rules and travel bans. It requires excessive optimism to discern anything positive amid US President Donald Trump’s plethora of decrees affecting Africa. Yet, the prompt surrender by some African leaders may do little to map out a way forward for the continent. Zimbabwean President Mnangagwa’s offer to Trump to withdraw all import tariffs on US goods won’t help his country. The same can be said for...
Mass mortality due to the cessation of aid. Economic subjugation through import tariffs. Tighter visa rules and travel bans. It requires excessive...
In the bombardment of punitive measures unleashed by the US government in recent weeks, it is striking how much South Africa has had to endure. Modest support for the distribution of anti-retroviral drugs has been halted, along with other aid worth half a billion dollars. The extension of the trade agreement between the two countries now seems unlikely. Finally, in mid-March, the South African ambassador to the US was declared persona non grata. Trump surrounds himself with a group of South African...
In the bombardment of punitive measures unleashed by the US government in recent weeks, it is striking how much South Africa has had to endure. Modest...
Anas Aremeyaw Anas wins defamation case against abusive Ghanaian politician The words of a colleague in a chat group of African investigative journalists said it all: “You’ve made all of us a bit safer, Anas. Thank you.” And indeed, investigative journalist Anas Aremeyaw Anas’ victory over a Ghanaian politician in a US court will resonate through political elite circles that are used to intimidating, harassing and even murdering journalists, and not only in Ghana. The undercover documentaries in...
Anas Aremeyaw Anas wins defamation case against abusive Ghanaian politician The words of a colleague in a chat group of African investigative journalists...
On Tuesday, March 18, 2025, King Willem-Alexander and Queen Máxima of the Netherlands are scheduled to visit Kenya. Under normal circumstances, this would be a moment of shared celebration between two nations bound by a history of trade, agriculture, and development cooperation. As regional hubs, both countries have ports that serve as important channels to large hinterlands, facilitating commerce across continents. But these are not normal times. Deepening crisis Since President William Ruto’s...
On Tuesday, March 18, 2025, King Willem-Alexander and Queen Máxima of the Netherlands are scheduled to visit Kenya. Under normal circumstances, this...
Dutch lobbyist Henk-Jan van Schothorst, affiliated with the right-wing orthodox Staatkundig Gereformeerde Partij (State Reformed Protestant Party) and founder of Christian Council International, has been instrumental in exporting anti-rights legislation across the African continent. In early 2023, the Ugandan parliament passed a brutal anti-gay law mandating the death penalty for "aggravated cases of homosexuality" and imposing a 20-year prison sentence for the “promotion” of homosexuality. Shortly...
Dutch lobbyist Henk-Jan van Schothorst, affiliated with the right-wing orthodox Staatkundig Gereformeerde Partij (State Reformed Protestant Party) and...
In his Nelson Mandela Lecture on Sunday, 16 February, speaker John-Allan Namu expressed optimism about the potential for change across the African continent, attributing it to an ‘upright’ Generation Z that refuses to be held in ‘subservience.’ Amid the many stories of African oppression and conflict, where does Namu find his hope? ZAM offers a bird’s-eye view of a continent where youth—and increasingly, the adult population—are indeed rising up. Mozambique: a crumbling ruling party Mozambican...
In his Nelson Mandela Lecture on Sunday, 16 February, speaker John-Allan Namu expressed optimism about the potential for change across the African...
The protest movement should not betray women On 10 December 2024, I joined thousands of feminists in a nationwide anti-femicide march in Kenya. More than 100 recent reports of women being murdered—most at the hands of their intimate partners—prompted us to spotlight the connections between gender-based violence, poor governance, and the economic crisis, including the rising cost of living. This marked the second march against gender-based violence in Kenya in 2024, following the first in February....
The protest movement should not betray women On 10 December 2024, I joined thousands of feminists in a nationwide anti-femicide march in Kenya. More than...
In March this year, the Dutch royal family will travel to Kenya, a state visit that has sparked considerable controversy. Why is the Dutch government sending its ceremonial representatives to a country where human rights are systematically violated? In Kenya, street protests against soaring prices of food, fuel, and internet access—burdens that weigh heavily on ordinary citizens while the political elite maintains its opulent lifestyle—have been met with extreme police violence in recent months....
In March this year, the Dutch royal family will travel to Kenya, a state visit that has sparked considerable controversy. Why is the Dutch government...
The Slavery Heritage Guide of The Cape (Gids Slavernijverleden van de Kaap) 2025, the latest instalment in the Mapping Slavery series on sites impacted by Dutch slavery and authored by Nancy Jouwe and Carine Zaayman, will be launched on 26 January at the Wereldmuseum in Amsterdam. “With the book launch we want to (…) bring into conversation the history and afterlives of Dutch colonialism in the Cape, but also how it shapes contemporary life in both the Cape and the Netherlands, as well as how it...
The Slavery Heritage Guide of The Cape (Gids Slavernijverleden van de Kaap) 2025, the latest instalment in the Mapping Slavery series on sites impacted...
The Dutch King and Queen’s visit to Kenya’s murderous regime is being prepared in the run up to ZAM’s Nels on Mandela Lecture by Kenyan investigative journalist. “Trade is important, but at what cost?” asks upcoming Nelson Mandela Lecture speaker, Kenyan investigative journalist John-Allan Namu, in a comment on the planned royal visit by Dutch King Willem-Alexander and Queen Maxima to his country. In Kenya, over sixty people were killed by police recently and abductions and disappearances of...
The Dutch King and Queen’s visit to Kenya’s murderous regime is being prepared in the run up to ZAM’s Nels on Mandela Lecture by Kenyan investigative...
Editor-in-Chief of the courageous Africa Uncensored media platform, John-Allan Namu, is set to spotlight Africa’s struggles for justice at the 2025 ZAM Nelson Mandela Lecture. As a Kenyan investigative journalist, Namu is well-acquainted with the horrors of power abuse, the machinations of genocidal politicians, the devastation wrought by climate change, and the forced migration of youth from nations misruled by uncaring, oppressive governments. Yet, while exposing wrongdoing, he also seeks...
Editor-in-Chief of the courageous Africa Uncensored media platform, John-Allan Namu, is set to spotlight Africa’s struggles for justice at the 2025 ZAM...
ZAM has joined the Ugandan civil rights groups Agora and the African Institute for Investigative Journalism (AIIJ) in condemning the arrests of journalists Agather Atuhaire and Godwin Toko, while calling for their immediate release. Atuhaire, Toko, and other civil rights activists were detained by Ugandan police on Thursday during a march in the capital, Kampala. The peaceful march protested the imprisonment of Eron Kiiza, the lawyer representing opposition leader Kizza Besigye. Besigye himself has...
ZAM has joined the Ugandan civil rights groups Agora and the African Institute for Investigative Journalism (AIIJ) in condemning the arrests of...
In October 2024, months after ZAM published ‘Hotel Kremlin’, the German broadcaster Deutsche Welle produced a podcast on the investigation, highlighting its “grim picture of life under military dictatorships in the Sahel.” In the podcast, the broadcaster interviewed one of the Hotel Kremlin journalists who, undercover, investigated in Mali; ZAM investigations editor Evelyn Groenink and seasoned West Africa-reporter and ZAM associate Bram Posthumus. The podcast highlights the investigation’s...
In October 2024, months after ZAM published ‘Hotel Kremlin’, the German broadcaster Deutsche Welle produced a podcast on the investigation, highlighting...
Too early to speak of an ‘African Spring’, but the leaves of protest are budding. "For weeks, large numbers of people across Mozambique have been protesting the results of the presidential elections, as seen here in Maputo. The elections, held on October 9, were reportedly won by Frelimo with 70% of the vote. Protesters sing the national anthem, bang pans, blow whistles, and hold up signs. They are responding to Facebook calls from presidential candidate Venâncio Mondlane, who fled the country and...
Too early to speak of an ‘African Spring’, but the leaves of protest are budding. "For weeks, large numbers of people across Mozambique have been...
