Geography Archives: Africa

In Guinea, doors fly open at the mere mention of Kwame Ture’s name. A senior government minister met me within a few hours’ notice.

October 15 was the 33rd anniversary of Thomas Sankara’s death. On this day, he was murdered by imperialist forces at the tender age of 37.

In the 1980s, after Mozambique won its independence from Portugal in 1974, the South African apartheid regime and the settler-colonial army of Rhodesia backed an anti-communist faction against the government of the Mozambique Liberation Front (FRELIMO).

Rice has been intimately involved in covering up the deaths of more than six million Congolese, and has cultivated close relations with every U.S.-backed tyrant on the continent.

He constantly experimented with and thought about how to connect learning and teaching among the poor and oppressed with the radical transformation of society.

The tragedy being the suffering Latin America has borne, the optimism being in the recognition that this is not the region’s natural or inevitable destiny, but has been imposed on it through its subjugation to the capitalist system, and is therefore capable of being changed.

You do not need to be a Marxist to agree that the methodology of historical materialism is relevant to struggles on the ground in Africa and globally, not only to the European working-class.

The Prime Minister of Mauritius, Pravind Jugnauth, has labeled the United Kingdom and the United States “hypocrites” and “champions of double talk” over their former colonial master’s refusal to hand over the Chagos Islands.

The United States government has continued attacking Cuban medical internationalism right up to the current pandemic, making wild allegations against the program that disparage the medical workers.

For Samir Amin’s anniversary on Sept 4, Global University for Sustainability invited Samir’s friends to reminisce their interactions with Samir and celebrate the very rich life that Samir lived.

‘Once they are taken to be ideas about a historical world-system, whose development itself involves “underdevelopment,” indeed is based on it, [Marx’s theses] are not only valid, but they are revolutionary as well.’

The Japanese-owned (Mitsui-operated) MV Wakashio was en route to Brazil from China to fetch iron ore from a port owned by the notorious mining company Vale. Here the ship is seen having run aground near Blue Bay, one of the area’s most pristine sites for coral, already threatened by bleaching due to the climate crisis. Now the marine life and fisherfolk must survive this spill.

In this second of a two-part series, Guyanese historian and activist Walter Rodney argues that the theory of scientific socialism can and should be used in the African context.

In his famous speech from the dock in April 1964, Nelson Mandela spoke of ‘revolutionary democracy’ rooted in precolonial forms of collective deliberation and decision making.

Haftar, who was once an intimate of the United States’ Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), is now prosecuting a seemingly endless and brutal war against the United Nation’s recognized Government of National Accord (GNA) based in Tripoli and led by President Fayez al-Sarraj.

My sense, while reading this book, was of a twentieth century tradition now ripe to be reclaimed and revived, since, like Du Bois and his generation, we will surely need now to grasp the deep roots of our multiple crises if we are to be free of them and deliver a world to our children that is fit to inherit.

There are immense casualties from this Great Lockdown. Incomes have collapsed for half the world’s population, while hunger rates are on the rise. But there are other casualties, other victims, often less remarked upon.

Sub-Saharan Africa is facing its greatest crisis in generations. The continent thus far has been less affected by the pandemic than other parts of the world. But the impact of the global economic crisis is already enormous.

More than 1,450 men and women in white lab coats from Cuba’s Henry Reeve Contingent have traveled to 22 nations in Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean, Africa and the Middle East to battle the pandemic.

Local communities have demonstrated remarkable generosity, but cannot cope anymore. National capacities are overwhelmed. The approaching lean season, coupled with the armed conflict and the COVID-19, will generate further dramatic situations and displacements of populations. The clock is ticking; we have little time left.