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. 
obama
Obama and racism in the West: What does it mean for Africa?
Patricia Daley
2009-10-29, Issue 455
cc AdaminaThe prominence of the Obama family has brought black people's humanity onto the world stage, writes Patricia Daley. The Obama family's success challenges patriarchal systems headed by white alpha-males and reveals possibilities of overcoming exclusion for non-white people across North and South America and Europe, Daley contends, albeit in the face of a backlash aimed at reinforcing white supremacy. But if struggles in the West over racial exclusivity can ultimately promote greater confidence from Africans and black people around the world, will there be a fresh impetus to challenge explicit and implicit claims of superiority?
Nkrumah at 100
Ama Biney
2009-09-24, Issue 449
© Africa WithinCommemorating the centenary of Pan-African ‘political prophet’ Kwame Nkrumah on 21 September, Ama Biney pays tribute to ‘a titan of the anti-colonial struggle and African history that all people of African descent – both young and old – should be proud of.’ But what would Nkrumah make of ‘retrogressive developments that have taken place during the last 50 years of Africa’s history’ if he were alive today?
Global: Is the G8 fit for purpose?
2009-07-17, Issue 442
Many commentators and development professionals echoed this refrain during the G8 2009 summit held in Italy from July 8 - 10. The UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-Moon, added his voice to the veritable cascade of dissension by declaring that the G8 “will...
Obama in Ghana: The speech he might have made
Firoze Manji
2009-07-16, Issue 442
cc Bill BlissThe internet and wires have been burning with anger and disappointment at the speech made by Obama this week at the start of his visit to Ghana. With several articles commenting on the speech in this issue, Firoze Manji provides a perspective on what Obama might have, or should have, said during his second visit to the continent in the space of a few weeks.
Obama in Cairo: Equivalences and silences
Paul T Zeleza
2009-06-11, Issue 437
cc Soldiers Media CenterPresident Obama’s speech to the Muslim world delivered on 4 June was ‘powerful’ and ‘smart’, but PT Zeleza finds himself most interested in its ‘equivalences and silences’. With reference to media reactions and commentary from different parts of the world, Zeleza looks at Obama’s framing of the relationship between the US and Islam, the parallels Obama draws between the civil rights movement in the United States and Palestinian resistance, and Obama’s failure to ‘fully address one of the fundamental reasons for the estrangement of the so-called Muslim world from the United States: The latter's support for authoritarian regimes’. The United States ‘would do itself a lot of good if it curtailed its propensities for destructive interventions around the world’, says Zeleza, while ‘the so-called Muslim world’ would benefit from building ‘truly democratic developmental states’.
What the US wants from Ghana
Asare Otchere-Darko
2009-06-11, Issue 437
cc flickr.comAn understanding of US interests is crucial for Ghana if it is to capitalise on the immense opportunity provided by the President Obama's July visit, writes Asare Otchere-Darko. Following a deepwater oil find in 2007, Ghana's pending oil-rich status has made it the subject of strategic US energy and military interests, and raising the stakes of Ghana–US relations, Otchere-Darko argues. As the US's preferred physical location for the US African Command (AFRICOM) headquarters and with the superpower concerned not to cede strategic ground to China in the region, Ghana has an unprecedented hand to play in this round of international diplomacy. The task of Ghanaians, says Otchere-Darko, is to ensure that Ghana comes away with concrete deliverables that help meet its own strategic goals, rather than simply being the honoured recipients of President Obama's first visit to Africa.
'A new beginning'?: Questioning Obama in Cairo
Mumia Abu-Jamal
2009-06-11, Issue 437
cc barackobamadotcomFollowing Barack Obama's historic speech in Cairo last week, Mumia Abu-Jamal of San Francisco's Prison Radio [external site] questions Obama's choice of destination. Underlining that Obama 'benefitted more by who he wasn't than who he was', Abu-Jamal acknowledges the US president's success in 'evok[ing] passion' where past presidents would simply have seemed arrogant. But with Egypt 'as far from a democracy as a mouse is from the moon' and benefitting from extensive US aid, America's trust in democracy looks highly dubious when its main allies across the region remain dictatorial regimes, Abu-Jamal contends.
The dawn of the Obama era: In memory of the ancestors
Paul T Zeleza
2009-01-22, Issue 416
Paul Tiyambe Zeleza does a reflective round-up on the different opinions surrounding President Obama’s inauguration. Zeleza argues that “The biggest challenge facing President Obama is how to manage the relative historic decline of American global supremacy in a world of new emerging powers and growing intolerance against authoritarianism whether within or between nations; in short, a more global and nationalistic world impatient with the old injustices and hierarchies of power and well-being and hungry for development, democracy, and self-determination.” That Obama has reached outside the race and national boundaries in an unprecedented way is not in question and the essay goes to emphasize the different ways different peoples in different parts of the world are responding to Obama - both as a challenge and as a promise.
Obama and US policy towards Africa
Horace Campbell
2009-01-15, Issue 415
As Obama takes over the presidency of the United States, Horace Campbell contextualizes an Obama presidency in the realities of Africa and the ongoing global finance crisis. He argues that “capitalism should not be reconstituted and rebuilt on the backs and bodies of Africans." For Campbell, the crisis is not simply a cyclical crisis of capitalism; it is a fundamental shift in the global political and economic order. In light of this fast changing world, Campbell is also interested in the possibilities and our responsibilities in bringing about change in and for Africa.
Barack, Hilary and the albatross
Annar Cassam
2008-07-30, Issue 391
Ten years ago, in May 1998, I had the pleasure of meeting Hillary Clinton, then the First Lady of the US, for a few minutes in Geneva during the World Health Organisation's 50th Anniversary Assembly. She was one of the VIPs invited to celebrate this event at the WHO which had just passed under the leadership of its first woman Director-General, Dr. Gro Haarlem Brundtland, former Prime Minister of Norway....
Barack Obama and the New Afrikan “National Question”
Kali Akuno
2008-06-12, Issue 380
Kali Akuno looks at the limits and contradictions of Obama and argues that the progressives have to use a "combined “outside-inside” strategy that seeks to advance a coherent set of principle demands and push him and the forces he has mobilized sharply to the left.
Lest we forget: An open letter to my sisters who are brave
Alice Walker
2008-04-03, Issue 363
Pambazuka News is pleased to reproduce for our readers this well received essay by Alice Walker in which she looks at Obama using various lenses such as black feminism and international solidarity while reflecting on race, class and gender and the black struggle in the United States