US news weekly Time’s eagerly awaited 100-strong list of the world’s most influential people in various fields of endeavour was released late last month. Proving that our continent is coming into... 

The past few years have witnessed the departure of a few African Big Men who had dominated the political landscape in their countries for decades. The most notable are Angola’s Jose Eduardo dos... 

Kenya has quite a high profile in Africa. It owes this visibility to several factors: it is East Africa’s economic powerhouse, its tourist attractions – which are patronised by visitors from across... 

The Covid-19 pandemic has had multiple impacts. Apart from hundreds of thousands of deaths, many economies are now shadows of their former selves, while scores of people have joined the ranks of... 

The ‘black tax’ phenomenon is as common in Mzansi as it is elsewhere on the continent. This is where societal values demand that individuals who ‘have arrived’ – nay, who are fortunate enough to... 

There is much depressing news around these days, from the havoc that the Covid-19 pandemic is wreaking on countries – in the health, economic and social senses – to tyrants continuing to ride... 

I have always admired the Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas). Unlike the regional body in our neck of the woods, the Southern African Development Community (SADC), it does talk –... 

Tourism is an important economic sector in Africa, accounting for a sizeable chunk of the gross domestic product (GDP) of many countries. Mauritius’ tourism sector boasts the highest GDP... 

When the much-hated Robert Mugabe was toppled by the military as Zimbabwe’s President in November 2017, there was hope that his successor would open up the democratic space and end the suffering of... 

There was a time not so long ago when, for many in Mzansi, Covid-19 was something they watched on television. That’s no longer the case, with the virus having infected hundreds of thousands. Sadly,... 

Jacob Zuma’s acerbic tongue is well known. Malawi was once at its receiving end when the former President, in an attempt to convince Gauteng residents to pay urban e-tolls, blurted: “We can’t think... 

Owing to the mediation role that South Africa played in conflict-prone Burundi, thus guaranteeing the Eastern African country a spot on our media agenda for many years, very few news-consuming... 

It’s well known that Africa faces an imminent dilemma as far as food security is concerned: the majority of its farmers are in the twilight of their careers, aged 60 on average, and their offspring... 

In one of the earliest instalments of this column, I wrote about Sophia, the social humanoid robot that was granted citizenship – with a passport to boot – by Saudi Arabia in October 2017, becoming... 

How enslaved Africans were shipped across the Atlantic over centuries is a story that has been told ad nauseum, generating a wealth of knowledge about this massive blot on the history of mankind.... 

In a few days, Africans at home and in the diaspora will be celebrating the fifty-seventh anniversary of Africa Day, which marks the founding of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), the... 

With Covid-19 having shaped up into a health crisis of unprecedented proportions – with equally unprecedented economic implications – it is not inconceivable that governments and other stakeholders... 

The Covid-19 pandemic has hogged news headlines during the past couple of months, and understandably so. The upshot has been that other crises have received comparatively little attention from the... 

The coronavirus disease – or Covid-19 – is dead serious business. According to the United Nations, the pandemic will likely consign 300 000 sons and daughters of the African soil to the grave,... 

It has been about a month since President Cyril Ramaphosa ordered a national lockdown to curb the spread of Covid-19 – a decision that earned him plaudits far and wide, even from his political... 

African elites are notorious for seeking medical care abroad, eschewing medical facilities in their own countries, many of which are in a sorry state, having been starved of cash for maintenance... 

I am a great admirer of Kenya’s PLO Lumumba, who is often on the speaking circuit in African capitals, preaching the gospel of African unity and good governance. The gist of what he says is that,... 

I become quite sceptical whenever the old argument that Africans must find African solutions to their challenges is invoked. The argument’s biggest proponents have been the many obnoxious dictators... 

March 14 was celebrated live and online around the world as the International Day of Mathematics. This was the first time this happened and followed a decision by the United Nations Educational,... 

Africa continues to face a paucity of political leaders whose democratic credentials are worthy writing home about. The latest evidence of this is the decision by the Mo Ibrahim Foundation not to... 

The Oxford English Dictionary (OED), described by some as “the last word on [English] words”, has been updated with 29 Nigerian English words and phrases. These include ‘severally’, as in “he... 

I start with a disclaimer: the only discipline in which I received training is the art and craft of journalism. I have never been anywhere near a business school or a lecture hall where the... 

My wife persuaded me to attend a wedding in Harare on the Saturday after Valentine’s Day. We got one of the earliest flights out of OR Tambo International Airport – just to make sure we would... 

Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni famously excoriated the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) as a trade union of dictators. That was in the mid-1980s. Back then, he was leading an insurrection... 

As I have pointed out before, the flare-ups of anti-immigrant sentiment among some communities in our beloved Mzansi do not define South Africans – especially those at the base of the socioeconomic... 

That Patrice Motsepe is a jolly good fellow is beyond question. He has proved to be one of the world’s more benevolent billionaires, having joined The Giving Pledge in 2013. By so doing, he... 

Constantino Chiwenga’s name should be pretty well known – at least in Southern Africa. He is the army general who, in November 2017, led the coup that toppled the late Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe’s... 

South Africans are an innovative lot. Much of the world knows about Chris Barnard, the surgeon who performed the world’s first heart transplant in 1967, but many other citizens of this great nation... 

The myriad of extreme weather events experienced in 2019 should be enough to convince even the most obdurate naysayer to accept the conventional wisdom that global warming – caused by the spewing... 

This year has been quite eventful for Africa, and some of the occurrences that came to pass were captured on this page over the past 50-odd weeks. In this last edition for 2019, I take you down... 

Three events in the past few weeks will go some way towards closing the digital divide between Africa and other continents. News-consuming South Africans should be familiar with one of these events... 

South Africans are still basking in the afterglow of the Springboks’ triumph at the Rugby World Cup. Party poopers like the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) tried their damnedest to diffuse the... 

Tourism is something of a cash cow for South Africa. Narrowly defined, the sector accounts for 2.9% of the country’s gross domestic product, but the figure jumps to 8.6% when supply chain linkages... 

The term ‘digital divide’ found its way into common parlance yonks ago. Initially, it referred to the division between those who had access to the telephone and those who did not. After the late... 

Humans have a propensity for being highly vocal when they are unhappy about how they are governed and for showing little hesitation in moving to lands where the grass appears to be greener. South... 

I’m not sure what to make of remarks by Nick Latta, a counsellor at the British high commission to South Africa at a conference in Durban a fortnight ago. She said the UK decided the break away... 

Some of us began to smell a rat when, in early August, Zimbabwe’s Finance and Economic Development Minister, Mthuli Ncube, banned the publication of annualised inflation figures until February next...