Pambazuka News is produced by a pan-African community of some 2,600 citizens and organisations - academics, policy makers, social activists, women's organisations, civil society organisations, writers, artists, poets, bloggers, and commentators who together produce insightful, sharp and thoughtful analyses and make it one of the largest and most innovative and influential web forums for social justice in Africa. 
equality
What Pambazuka News means to the Pan-Africanist in me
Chambi Chachage
2010-10-13, Issue 500
Pambazuka News has fostered debate about the 'whole spectrum of political colouring' and in so doing played a crucial role in turning ideas into pro-African action, writes Chambi Chachage.
Loving each other won’t cure ‘negative ethnicity’
L. Muthoni Wanyeki
2010-02-04, Issue 468
While initiatives seeking to address ‘negative ethnicity’ in Kenya are ‘potentially useful and well meaning’, L. Muthoni Wanyeki believes that they fail to get to the core of the problem. There is, she argues, no real understanding of what equality and non-discrimination actually mean. Wanyeki deems there to be a misplaced focus on ‘whether or not we like each other’. She holds rather, that tensions in Kenya have arisen because there is an unhealthy cycle of discrimination and stereotyping that has become normalised. The focus in remedying this cannot then be on making Kenyans ‘like’ one another, Wanyeki argues, but on how to ‘regulate whether and how those feelings translate into actions; into discrimination’.
Promoting women's land rights at the 13th AU summit
Lyn Ossome
2009-06-25, Issue 439
cc MaristellaWith Sirte, Lybia, hosting the 13th African Union summit this week, Lyn Ossome of Solidarity for African Women's Rights (SOAWR) challenges African heads of state to keep women's land rights on the developmental agenda. At a time of marked global economic difficulty, women remain acutely vulnerable to unstable food prices and restricted access to land, meaning that African governments must now more than ever challenge discriminatory laws and customs, Ossome argues. If the AU's summit is offer progress, Ossome contends, African heads of state must make strong commitments to policies favourable to women's empowerment such as subsidising non-industrial agriculture and securing women's land tenure.
China and India in Africa: challenging the status quo?
Sanusha Naidu and Hayley Herman
2008-09-03, Issue 394
‘Equality and mutual benefit’ are reflected today in Chinese leaders’ frequent emphasis on aid as a partnership, not a one way transfer of charity, -quoted in Deborah Brautigam’s, China’s African Aid: Transatlantic Challenges\...
Lost in a haystack: gender equality in aid effectiveness
Florence E. Etta
2008-08-26, Issue 394
Early in September 2008 the world will hold another one of its mega gatherings in Accra Ghana - the third high level forum on aid effectiveness. World leaders will convene to append their priceless signatures to a document now popularly called the tr...
Third world prospects in an Obama presidency
Steve Sharra
2008-08-11, Issue 393
The exclamatory commentary that has accompanied Barack Obama’s ascendancy to the presumed nomination of the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate has excited, beneath it, the question of what the nomination itself, and a possible Obama presidency, might mean for the Pan-Africanist world as well as the Third World. While much of the commentary has been laudatory, there have also been cautionary tones, not to mention ambivalent ones. Beyond the excitement, caution and ambivalence of what a possible Obama presidency might entail for Pan-Africa and the Third World, what Obama himself has said in his writing, and has not said, might prove to be revelatory in attempting to explore the discussion that has exercised many minds around the world. We take this exploration by examining some of the issues that have been raised by editorialists and columnists, bloggers and other commentators in Africa and beyond. We also delve into what Obama himself has said in his two best-belling books, as we ponder how the significance of a possible Obama presidency may be realized more in the symbolic transformation of perceptions of race, racism and racial identity in the US and in the world, than in what the office of the US presidency itself is capable or incapable of achieving.
Enforcement of the Sexual Offences Act in Kenya
Anne Kithaka
2008-08-05, Issue 392
INTRODUCTION Is the criminal justice system in Kenya well equipped to protect women from gender-based violence? This a critical question because in July this year, the Sexual Offences Act (SOA) is celebra...
Politics at stake: a note on stakeholder analysis
Mark Butler and David Ntseng
2008-07-31, Issue 392
People in government, business, and political and civil society organisations routinely talk about 'stakeholders'. They do exercises in stakeholder analysis to inform their 'strategic planning'. Invariably they use the stakeholder language to adverti...
Transitional justice in sexual and gender-based violence
Makau Mutua
2008-07-14, Issue 388
It is now fashionable in academic and activist circles to speak of transitional justice in normative, inflexible terms that suggest a utopian certainty, writes Makau Mutua. Nothing could be further from the truth. At the outset, we need to understand that transitional justice concepts are experimental – good experiments to be sure – but that they do not offer us tested panacea because they are essentially works in progress. This is not meant to diminish the utility of the concepts or to throw cold water on them as a beachhead for recovering societies with a legacy of traumatic conflict. Rather, it is to recognize their limitation so that we do not stampede to the temple only to find it empty of the goddess of truth.
The politics of fear and the fear of politics
Michael Neocosmos
2008-06-12, Issue 380
Reflecting on the causes of the recent xenophobic pogroms in the country, it is striking how most commentators have stressed poverty and deprivation as the underlying causes of the events, writes Michael Neocosmos. Yet it requires little effort to see that economic factors, however real, cannot possibly account for why it was those deemed to be non-South Africans who bore the brunt of the vicious attacks. Poverty can be and has historically been the foundation for the whole range of political ideologies, from communism to fascism and anything in between. In actual fact, poverty can only account for the powerlessness, frustration and desperation of the perpetrators, but not for their target. After all why were not Whites or the rich or for that matter White foreigners in South Africa targeted instead? Of course it is a common occurrence that the powerless regularly take out their frustrations on the weakest: women, children, the elderly... and outsiders. Yet this will not suffice as an explanation.
Women, water and sanitation: going the extra mile
Catherine Irura
2008-06-10, Issue 379
This year's African Union Summit, 24th June to 1st July 2008, will be on ‘Meeting the Millennium Development Goals on Water and Sanitation’. What should African leaders take into account when thinking about how to meet these goals and those of The African Union Protocol on the Rights of Women in Africa? Catherine Irura tackes this question.
Access to information as a tool for socio-economic justice
Mukelani Dimba
2008-04-08, Issue 372
In this article Mukelani Dimba shows how freedom of information legislation can be used by citizens to pursue their socio-economic rights. He argues that it creates the conditions in which government decisions about resource allocation can be effectively challenged.
Women and the 2008 Ghana Elections
Mawuli Dake
2008-05-05, Issue 369
Mawuli Dake looks at the ways in which women are being locked out of the democratic processes in Ghana and argues that societies "cannot claim to be committed to the principles and ideals of democracy and the universal values of equality" if groups within are marginalized.
Peeling the Kenyan Conflict Onion
Alice Nderitu
2008-04-15, Issue 362
Alice Nderitu argues that development, security and human rights should be the priorities in Kenya post conflict reconstruction; and not creating a bloated cabinet under the guise of power-sharing.
It’s official. We have a grossly overpaid cabinet of 40, the largest ever in East Africa.
Zimbabwe Doctors on the Zimbabwe elections
Zimbabwe Association of Doctors for Human Rights
2008-04-08, Issue 360
Statement on World Health Day The Zimbabwe Association of Doctors for Human Rights calls to attention the state of the public health system. Zimbabwe?s healthcare system, in a known state of crisis, is in need of urgent attention. It is crippled ...
Liberia Women: Their Issues and Challenge
Una Kumba Thompson
2008-03-06, Issue 351
Una Kumba Thompson talks about the special challenges facing Liberian women and calls for greater solidarity amongst African women
Kenya’s democracy on trial
Mukoma Wa Ngugi
2008-01-03, Issue 334
Mukoma Wa Ngugi argues that the dream of democracy is turning into a nightmare and suggests a recount as a possible solution.
African food sovereignty or AGRA
Mukoma wa Ngugi
2007-12-12, Issue 332
Mukoma Wa Ngugi speaks to the dangers surrounding the Bill Gates initiative - Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA)
African women and domestic violence
Takyiwaa Manuh
2007-11-28, Issue 330
The experience of using law to address the issue of domestic violence in Africa contains both positive and negative lessons for gender-equality campaigners, says Takyiwaa Manuh.
Putting the teeth back in the SADC Gender Protocol
Pamela Mhlanga
2007-11-29, Issue 330
The journey just got tougher for civil society activists who have been spearheading efforts to ensure that Southern African Development Community (SADC) governments are legally bound to achieve gender equality, writes Pamela Mhlanga
Making the AU protocol a continental agenda: SOAWR's experience
Caroline Muthoni Muriithi
2007-11-21, Issue 329
As we approach the 2nd anniversary of the coming into force of the Protocol,Caroline Muthoni Muriithi takes us on a retrospective of the continental successes that SOAWR has achieved so far.
The challenges of ratification: Highs and lows of gender activism
Marren Akatsa-Bukachi
2007-11-21, Issue 329
On the second anniversary of the Protocol to the African Charter on the Rights of Women in Africa, Marren Akatsa-Bukachi reflects on the challenges faced in the past year.
Kenya's ping-pong with the Protocol
Anne Atieno Amadi
2007-11-21, Issue 329
The Kenyan situation as regards the ratification of the Protocol has become something akin to a game of ping pong. So far the position of its ratification remains unclear and efforts by different interested parties to obtain clarity on the position seem to hit a dead end, writes Anna Amadi.
Sudanese women: Towards ending violence and discrimination
Ratification of the protocol is crucial
Manal Abdelhalim
2007-11-21, Issue 329
Manal Abdelhalim reflects on the Sudan's progress towards ending violence and discrimination against women, within the context of the protocol.
Women, equality and the African human rights system
Roselynn Musa
2007-11-13, Issue 328
Roselynn Musa writes that despite the promises and the mobilisations by women from all over the continent, African women still lack adequate protection of their human rights. She argues that the root of the problem is the persistent lack of political will by governments to implement commitments to gender equality.