Blue Lines
The future of the International Criminal Court is in question again as it tries to choose a successor to the prosecutor Fatou Bensouda. The United States, although it has never joined the ICC, stepped up its attacks on the court this year, barring its off...
Blue Lines
The prospects of the mass protests against grand corruption and economic mismanagement planned for 31 July triggering a popular uprising against Emmerson Mnangagwa's government are slim but not beyond the bounds of possibility. That is why on 20 July poli...
Blue Lines
In a bid to grab attention amid the global pandemic, the Islamist insurgents in the Cabo Delgado province of northern Mozambique are edging towards the site of the country's planned giant gas export plant, Africa's biggest investment project. The latest a...
Blue Lines
After the African caucus at the UN Human Rights council called for a rare urgent debate on human rights in the United States and circulated a draft resolution calling for a high-powered investigation into racism and police violence there, diplomats in Gen...
Blue Lines
An extraordinary letter from James E Risch, chairman of the United States Senate Foreign Relations Committee, to World Bank President David Malpass called for the strictest accountability on a $7 million grant to Zimbabwe managed by the UN and the Catholi...
Blue Lines
The overwhelming vote, backed by African and European delegations, at the World Health Organisation assembly on 18-20 May for coronavirus vaccines to be classed as global public goods – universally available under pooled patents – boosts organisations suc...
Blue Lines
More than 20 African countries were due to hold elections in 2020. But electioneering is difficult and organising polls fraught with problems against a backdrop of lockdown measures to control the coronavirus pandemic.Ending the lockdown is the only way t...
Blue Lines
Concerns are deepening that authoritarian regimes in Africa are exploiting the coronavirus pandemic to crack down on oppositionists and bolster surveillance of dissidents. Activists are under attack in Uganda, where one of opposition leader Bobi Wine's p...
Blue Lines
So far, Africa has not seen the death tolls that have become daily reality in Europe and North America, but the scale of the damage to its economies from the coronavirus pandemic is becoming clearer.On 15 April, the International Monetary Fund forecast th...
Blue Lines
In Europe, the coronavirus has brought the command economy back into fashion. Without similar financial resources, African governments will struggle to follow suit in subsidising businesses and wages and converting factories to make ventilators and protec...
