It always comes as a breath of fresh air when an African leader receives a pat on the back for his or her accomplishments. This is because political leaders who distinguish themselves are something... 

A post on Ghanaian Vice-President Mahamudu Bawumia’s Twitter feed towards the end of last month caught my eye. It was a twenty-worder: “Not a single Ghanaian, irrespective of his or her remoteness,... 

Another dictator has bitten the dust. As I write, Sudanese strongman Omar Hassan al-Bashir is languishing in the notorious Kobar prison, on the outskirts of Khartoum, where thousands of political... 

Huge sums have been pumped into research and development in recent decades, and the upshot is that science and technology are on fast forward. Over the past century, thousands of ideas across many... 

Unemployment is a major socioeconomic problem in South Africa and the rest of the continent, and the youth bear its brunt. The massive investments in education by governments have not made a... 

Southern Africa is in mourning. More than 1 000 people have perished since the tropical cyclone, Idai, lashed parts of Malawi, Mozambique and Zimbabwe last month. The toll will likely increase, as... 

I have in the past used this column to lay into a top KwaZulu-Natal Education Department official for ranting about the rather lacklustre performance of the province’s matriculants, despite the... 

It has been 14 years since my employers persuaded me to become a desk-bound pen-pusher. This spelt an end to my career as a reporter, which I had thoroughly enjoyed, save for the all-too-frequent... 

Education accounts for the lion’s share of the Budgets of many countries. This huge investment, it is reasoned, is a prerequisite for future prosperity. But, as survey after survey has... 

Like the rest of the world’s developing regions, Africa is faced with a youth bulge. Coined in the mid-1990s by German demographer Gunnar Heinsohn, the term refers to the phenomenon whereby success... 

That the politics of the governing party in Zimbabwe are repellent is common knowledge. Zanu-PF has perfected the art of rigging elections over well-nigh four decades and has not hesitated to... 

It is just before 14:00 on the afternoon of February 20 as I wait for the National Budget Review 2019 to be published in its electronic form. While doing so, I am reminded of a time, not so long... 

It’s election season in Africa. At the time of writing, Nigerians and their fellow West Africans in Senegal were due to go to the polls in a few days, while the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)... 

That I am an Afro-optimist in no secret. This simply means that, unlike doomsayers like Donald Trump, who once likened our countries to latrines, I strongly believe in the Africa Rising narrative.... 

Just more than a year ago, African heads of State and government converged on the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa to launch 2018 as the continent’s Anticorruption Year. No stone was going to be... 

Our 2018 matriculants – those who wrote the National Senior Certificate (NSC) exams and those who attended schools affiliated with the Independent Examination Board (IEB) alike – deserve a huge pat... 

A couple of weeks back, I mentioned in this couple that the African Union will this month be providing details of its plans to launch a pan-African passport as part of its efforts to improve the... 

In last week’s instalment of this column, I took issue with African institutions’ not-so-golden silence while rogue governments on the continent ride rough-shod over their citizens. One of the... 

African institutions have often been accused of being long on talk and short on action. A case in point is the deafening rhetoric about good governance by the likes of the Southern African... 

Time flies indeed. It has already been a year since my editor invited me to contribute a weekly column in Engineering News, an opportunity that I grabbed with both hands. During the past 50-odd... 

First things first – M-Pesa stands for mobile pesa, with pesa Swahili for money (I have been busy building up my Swahili vocabulary ever since Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga announced a... 

Mozambique’s founding President, the late Samora Moises Machel, is famous for having coined and popularised the slogan Aluta Continua! (Portuguese for ‘the struggle continues’). He used it to rally... 

At the end of this month – or at least by the middle of December – scores of young men and women will be completing their undergraduate studies at South Africa’s 26 public universities and at the... 

Nineteenth-century British imperialist and entrepreneur Cecil John Rhodes had grand plans to construct a railway line from Cape Town, on the southern tip of the continent, to Cairo, in North... 

It’s mind-boggling. Donald Trump is a darling of more than half of Nigerians, the very people he derided as hut-dwellers not so long ago. This, of course, is if a new study conducted by the Pew... 

In rather melodramatic fashion, one journalist, writing in June this year, portrayed the rate at which the world is losing its forests thus: “Image looking down on huge swathe of lush forest – but... 

I have made no bones about my cynicism about Chinese generosity towards African countries, which has taken the form of top-dollar freebies, government and State-owned company loans and investment... 

Television footage of desperate Africans drowning in the Mediterranean Sea en route to Spain and other European destinations that hold out the promise of a better life has become all too frequent.... 

South Africa’s inaugural Jobs Summit was convened in Johannesburg last week to brainstorm on possible solutions to the country’s stubborn unemployment scourge. Statistics South Africa (Stats SA)... 

Readers of this column who are not news junkies like yours truly may have missed the announcement, made last month: South African schools, both public and private, will be offering Swahili as an... 

The main opposition party across the Limpopo insists that “we wuz robbed” in the July 30 elections that returned Zanu-PF to power and gave Emmerson Mnangagwa, who had been caretaker President since... 

I start with a mea culpa this week. In the September 7 edition, I waxed lyrical about the exploits of Sophia, the humanoid robot, at the SAPNow conference, which had been held in Johannesburg the... 

South Africans are a whinging lot – there is survey data from credible research entities to prove this – and one of biggest gripes is about living conditions in towns and cities, especially in the... 

Sophia the Saudi Arabian. Rings a bell? If it doesn’t, a clue: she was the subject of a recent instalment of this column and has the rare distinction of not having been born of flesh and blood. She... 

The mobile phone has undergone an almost dramatic transition in the past two decades from a status symbol affordable only by the well-to-do to a ubiquitous device that even those of very modest... 

Gold has been associated with our neck of the woods since its discovery on a farm just outside the present-day Joburg central business district back in 1886. Thanks to this association, it was not... 

It could be back to the future for Zimbabwe, where many had set great store by the general elections held on July 30, which returned the governing Zanu-PF and its Presidential candidate, Emmerson... 

Back in March, former US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson became the umpteenth Western big gun to urge Africans to beware of Chinese generosity on the continent, which has taken the form of... 

Aliko Dangote, Africa’s richest man – with a net worth of $12.4-billion – is redefining philanthropy in his native Nigeria. But the 61-year-old is doing this in a way that will make his bank... 

Two international university rankings published in the last couple of months had me thinking about a perception index released by consultancy firm Ipsos in January, which revealed that South... 

First, a disclaimer: I am of very sober habits and this week’s topic – the apparent desire by many on our continent to embrace the cannabis business – is not at all indicative of my recreational... 

Picture this scene: you are driving along a road in suburban Johannesburg and a stern-looking cop pulls you over, informing you, as you wind down your window, that you have exceeded the speed limit...