On 23 March last year, an air of tense anticipation enveloped Zimbabwe as citizens gathered around screens, their breaths held, awaiting the premiere of Al Jazeera’s highly anticipated documentary, The Gold Mafia: The Laundry Service. The buzz was palpable, and the documentary delivered. Unfolding over almost an hour, the film peeled back layers to reveal the festering underbelly of corruption that had taken root in the southern African nation. This revelation was not an isolated incident. The Willowgate, Draxgate, Nkandla, and Phala Phala farmgate scandals are etched in the collective memory of Zimbabweans and South Africans alike, serving as stark…
Adio-Adet Dinika
Adio-Adet Dinika
Adio-Adet Dinika is a writer, researcher and affiliated PhD Fellow at the Bremen International Graduate School of Social Science (BIGSSS). His areas of interest are Digitalisation and the Future of Work. He has published opinion pieces on Digitalisation and socio-economic development in several print and online publications, and his first unpublished novel, They like us dead, was long listed for the 2021 James Currey Prize for African Literature. He is currently based in Bremen, Germany.
From Cape to Cairo, decentralisation reforms have swept across modern Africa as countries seek to devolve decision-making power, resources, and service delivery responsibilities from central bureaucracies to provincial, district and municipal bodies. These sub-national units can ostensibly sharpen needs assessment, infrastructure oversight and welfare policies in unique community contexts. The theoretical promise is far-reaching: bridging development gaps through localised innovation, incubating participatory democracy where state institutions engage with citizens, and stabilising national politics. Democratic openings across Africa since the 1990s have further boosted decentralisation, suggesting responsive governance and legitimacy gains where centralised authority once suppressed plural voices. Although decentralisation’s impacts…
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s recent promise of free grain to six African countries and headlines highlighting the continent’s reliance on grain imports from war-torn Ukraine demonstrate Africa’s urgent need to strengthen agricultural capacity and food security. Persistent food insecurity and agricultural underdevelopment undermine health, stability, and economic progress across many African countries. According to Oxfam, 20% of Africans are undernourished, and nearly half of the population lacks access to clean drinking water. At the same time, Africa spends more than $35 billion annually importing staple cereals, oils, and other basic foods to meet demand. With climate change exacerbating droughts, floods,…
A friend once showed me an image: Africa at night, shrouded in darkness, with sparse lights dotting the edges. It was a stark and uncomfortable image –the “Dark Continent”– yet it conceals the truth of Africa’s immense potential. While Africa is endowed with rich natural resources and vibrant human capital, it still grapples with substantial power challenges. This is an unfortunate testament to our leaders and, by extension, ourselves. But change is on the horizon. Current narratives within the energy sector suggest a critical point in Africa’s energy trajectory – a paradigm shift from reliance on traditional fossil fuels to…
