Ghana goes to elections in December. In this first installment of a two-part article, the author argues that, like in many developing countries, heightened expectations that democratisation would lead to inclusive and sustainable development have not been realised. Ghana has successfully transformed from authoritarian rule to a fledging liberal democracy, but in the midst of poverty and destitution.

A recent attempt by Somalia to ban Khat imports from Kenya sparked a row, which was resolved following discussions between the presidents of the two countries. The exports have resumed. But while Khat is a lucrative business for Kenya, Somalia does not need the drug. It is a well-known health and social hazard that frustrates Somalia’s recovery.

Liberation of a land dispossessed people without land is a gigantic colonial fraud. Land is the primary source of life. Food does not grow in the sky. Houses are not built in the air. Gold, platinum, diamonds, oil and all other minerals are dug from the land. Cattle, sheep, goats, horses do not graze in the air. Pastures and water are found in the land. Even the departed demand their graves not in the clouds but in the land.

There is no violation of human rights worse than the violation of the right to existence. It is this abiding condition that gave rise to the Niger Delta problem. The recurring violence that holds the nation by the jugular is a manifestation of deep-rooted frustration of negligence on the part of government and multinational companies over the plight of the people in the region.

Journalist Anjan Sundaram’s book on Rwanda exposes a terrifying dictatorship at the heart of Africa that few people get to hear about. Paul Kagame has tremendously succeeded – with the eager help of his western backers - to feed the world a carefully choreographed false narrative. His chilling tyranny is so pervasive and entrenched that Rwandans police themselves unbidden.

A second phase of the 8^th Pan African Congress is set for June/July 2017, following what is considered the first phase that took place in Accra, Ghana, in March 2015. In August, Ikaweba Bunting, Deputy Secretary General (Ag) of Global Pan African Movement, published a Briefing Document on these developments. But in response, Bankie Forster Bankie raises numerous questions about that document – and the unaddressed matter of the 8^th PAC held in Johannesburg in 2014.

The increased demand for gold by Chinese traders has worsened illegal artisanal mining in the rivers of Ghana, leading to massive destruction of the water bodies. The Ghanaian authorities seem to be unconcerned. Before long, unless something drastic is done, people will lack clean water for use.

Freedom of expression and the press is guaranteed under Section 39 of Nigeria's Constitution. But restrictive laws which allow for journalists and bloggers to be arrested for reporting critically on politicians and others, violates that right.

As special-interest associations, community-based organisations fill an institutional vacuum, providing basic services to ensure a robust response to crises of poverty. It is at this local level that people, however limited their incomes or their assets, tend to reveal their true wealth: the ingenuity that they need to solve their own problems and those of their communities.

A manipulative form of nationalism that has been sanctioned over the past twenty years in neo-colonial South Africa seems determined to reconstruct a nation of disfigured memories and half-truths. Citizens must resist this manufactured nation building characterized by dispossession, coercive silencing and constant un-remembering.

Most issues discussed at the UN are matters of life and death to residents of the global south, especially Africa. Yet beyond the long ceremonial speeches by African leaders at the General Assembly, African voices are marginalized at the UN’s top decision-making organ, the Security Council. There is a need for spirited advocacy for better representation of Africa and the global south.

The prospect of South Africa joining the UN Security Council as a permanent member could explain President Zuma’s reported enthusiasm for the nuclear project. Being remembered as the president who gave Africa a greater voice on the global stage and secured South Africa’s role as the continent’s megaphone is probably too tantalizing for Zuma and his administration to forego.

The International Preparatory Committee considered the historical precedent set by various PACs and in particular the 2^nd PAC that was held in phases. Subsequently the meeting unanimously agreed to follow the historical precedent of the 2^ndPAC of 1921 that took place in phases in different cities including London, Brussels and Paris and organize the 8^thPan African Congress in a two-phase process. Phase I was the meeting convened in Ghana, March 2015. Phase II, earlier set for not later than May 2016, will now be convened in June/August 2017.

The new film, “A Brilliant Genocide”, tells the story of the largely unacknowledged Acholi Genocide that President Yoweri Museveni committed against the Acholi people for 20 years from 1986 to 2006. Museveni’s troops drove nearly two million Acholis, 90% of the population, into concentration camps. In all that time, the Ugandan military machine continued to be financed by the US.

The ICC has taken a new step that could redeem its damaged image and endear it to progressive people in Africa and all the developing world. The court has announced that henceforth it will be investigating with a view to prosecuting crimes that result in the destruction of the environment, the illegal exploitation of natural resources and  illegal dispossession of land.

Founded in 1961 during the Cold War as a bloc bringing together nations that neither supported nor opposed the big powers, the Non-Aligned Movement has some 120 member-states mostly in the Global South but only a handful sent representatives to the latest Summit. The low turn out and absence of NAM’s voice in international affairs have led to calls for the re-evaluation of the movement’s relevance in today’s world.

Last month Canadian Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan undertook a weeklong five-nation tour ostensibly to "strengthen relationships with African partners." A notable figure on that trip was General Romeo Dallaire, a close ally of the “Butcher of the Great Lakes”, Rwanda's Paul Kagame. Loud expressions of Canada’s benevolence to Africa hide Ottawa’s chequered history of self-serving policies - often with bloody consequences - presented as altruism.

The Nkrumah years of transition from 1951-1956 and the independence period of 1957-1966 set the standard for African development and political imperatives related to inter-state integration and women’s affairs. Nkrumah was overthrown in a coup orchestrated by the US on 24 February 1966. Genuine African liberation, unification and socialist development can only occur after a fundamental break with world capitalism.

Deeply hurt by Britain’s overwhelming support for Nigeria to crush the Republic of Biafra, Dr Ibiam renounced and returned to the British head of state the three insignias of knighthood that both she and her father, King George VI, had earlier conferred on the esteemed missionary physician for services to church and state.

South Africa’s population is 86% black. Yet between 2010-2014, the Department of Politics at the University of Cape Town has graduated only two black MA students. In 2015, 97% of black applicants were denied admission to the Masters programme. To-date there is not a single black South African enrolled in the programme. Has this exclusion become a way of carving out the task of thinking and intellectual production as an exclusive white preserve?

My father is a man of principles and a stubborn man. I am terrified that he will take his hunger strike to its end. I do not want him to die.

The intersectionality of people’s struggles on climate change calls for concerted efforts towards climate justice. Across the world, communities are made vulnerable by intensified exploitation of natural resources and overproduction for profit. There is a need to launch and strengthen grassroots educational and advocacy campaigns to deepen understanding of the relationship between climate change and human rights.

Does it make any sense for Israel to claim to be strengthening its historical ties with Ethiopia, when thousands of Ethiopian Jews in Israel are treated like second-class citizens? Prime Minister HeilaMariam Desalegn should have had the courage to call for the respect of the human rights of these citizens who in the first place were assisted to migrate to Israel by the Jewish state itself.

Nigeria is gripped by the familiar anxieties of an economy in distress. This escalating crisis has demystified a president once thought capable of astute, if not magical, economic management. In their desperation for respite, many Nigerians are now paradoxically yearning for the corruption that they and their leaders blame for their economic woes.

The first African People´s Tribunal on Transnational Corporations, that recently took place on 16^th and 17^th August in Manzini, Swaziland, was perhaps one of the most counter-hegemonic and brave events to bring some hope to mining affected communities in Southern Africa.

The argument that France is waging war on Islamic dress codes to prevent the enslavement of women is just one more example of disgusting hypocrisy in the service of imperialist interests. Instead of representing liberation of women from all the ways they are already enslaved, it amounts to screaming about the domination of Muslim women by Muslim men just so that these women can be forced to accept forms of oppression that patriarchal, imperialist French society considers proper.

Black August is inseparably linked to the legacy of the assassinated prison leader, revolutionary, Marxist and Black Panther Party Field Marshal George Jackson. Black August is very important to the global African struggle for liberation. It is positively affirming the necessity of a politics that is all about ending oppressive relations in society and the use of all available means, including armed struggle, to create a just society.

As an example of leadership for Africa, the AU is seriously wanting. Yet this is not just an intergovernmental organization. It is a rallying point for the actualization of the African people’s deepest aspirations for freedom, dignity, unity and shared prosperity. In a hegemonic globalizing world, the AU needs a revolutionary leader with global stature to uphold and protect the principles and vision of the Constitutive Act.

Nigeria’s ruling elites are blithely pursuing a neoliberal path of self-destruction, setting the stage for a national meltdown unless diverted by some miracle. Unaddressed grievances have spawned numerous violent movements actively championing secession of their regions from the federation. The nation-building project has failed. And as no sensible alternative is being offered, the result in the long-run could be utter chaos.

Libya once was a proud nation that rejected US military presence on the continent, seeing it as an obstacle to Pan-African unity. With the country destroyed, the US has been able to further expand militarily all over the continent. And it has been President Obama, not George W. Bush, who has presided over the rapid neo-colonization of Africa.

Once we rid ourselves of the false notion that the market economy, as a system, could be objective or benevolent, and we distinguish it from the market as one economic institution instead of a system, we can aptly move towards rejecting the market economy while embracing healthy regulated markets.

The ouster of Brazilian President Dilma Roussef and the ongoing process of impeaching her are in fact a coup organized by the wealthy classes in the country with the support of their foreign masters. The objective of this is to roll back important reforms aimed at bettering the lives of the people and instead place in the hands of the oligarchs Brazil’s key industries and resources.