Geography Archives: Kenya

  • 10th anniversary of Kenya independence (16 January 2009)

    Kenya – a loyal lieutenant of imperialism

    On the 60th anniversary of Kenya’s independence, Gathanga Ndung’u writes that the country has spent decades as the loyal servant of imperialism. The country may have express highways, a busy international airport, a modern railway, and an emerging silicone savannah, but in reality, Kenya seeks only to endear itself to world leaders and potential investors through well-packaged imaginaries of the present and the future. Ndung’u lists some of Kenya’s extensive betrayals – not least support for Israel and the abandonment of Palestinians.

  • Haitian protester holds an anti-US sign during a protest against the unelected, US-backed Haitian regime, in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, on Oct. 17, 2022. Photo: Richard Pierrin/AFP.

    UNSC approves deployment of troops to Haiti despite protests

    On Monday, the Security Council of the United Nations (UN) authorized the deployment of Kenyan troops to Haiti.

  • Police officers patrol a street in the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince (courtesy Marvens Compère/Haitian Times)

    In Haiti, Kenya chooses imperialist servitude over Pan-African solidarity

    The Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) condemns in the strongest possible terms Kenya’s proposal to lead what amounts to a foreign armed intervention in Haiti. 

  • Why I did not vote

    Why I did not vote

    Reflecting on the recent Kenyan elections, radical activist and poet Lena Anyuolo explains why she did not vote. How could anyone vote in elections that offered no alternative? Anyuolo explains, ‘Politicians crawl out like cockroaches from dark holes every five years; fat and destructive, ready to unleash more destruction.’

  • FTA = Death (Photo: citizennews.org)

    Weaponizing Free Trade Agreements

    Long seen as means to seek advantage on the pretext of providing mutual benefit, free trade agreements may increasingly become economic weapons in the new Cold War, disrupting earlier globalization.

  • Digital Money Beyond Blockchain with Rohan Grey

    In this episode, we’re joined by Rohan Grey (@rohangrey), President of the Modern Money Network, Director of the National Jobs for All Coalition, Research Fellow at the Global Institute for Sustainable Prosperity, and JSD student at Cornell Law school. Our conversation is dedicated to Rohan’s current work on the political, economic, and cultural implications of money’s digital future.

  • Kenya in the Digital Finance Revolution with Sibel Kusimba

    Money on the Left speaks with Sibel Kusimba, Associate Professor of Anthropology at University of South Florida, about her work on mobile money and digital finance in Kenya. In her recently published book with Stanford University Press titled Reimagining Money: Kenya in the Digital Finance Revolution, Kusimba both theorizes and critiques Kenya’s thriving M-Pesa mobile phone-based payment system as a constitutive component of Kenyan social life.

  • “Collectivized Torture”: Drone Warfare and the Dark Side of Counterinsurgency

    The recent Stanford University report on drone strikes in Pakistan, Living Under Drones, raises the possibility that the US is intentionally using drones, not merely as hi-tech assassination devices, but also as weapons of state terror intended to subdue unruly regions and populations.  The appalling reality of drone warfare along the Afghanistan border closely resembles […]

  • More Than Conquerors (Montserrat’s 50th — A Modest Proposal to the Tourist Board)

    (For Justin Hero Cassell) I heard a foolish man say the other day that everything of interest on the island of Montserrat can be seen in two days.  I kept my own counsel and did not talk of either his mother or his lineage.  But the truth is this, friend: It takes a week at […]

  • The Assassination of Gaddafi

    The news of the killing of Colonel Gaddafi in the battle to take Sirte marked one more episode in this NATO war in Libya and North Africa.  The killing has all of the hallmarks of a coordinated assassination, synchronised between NATO aircraft and forces on the ground.  The reports are that Gaddafi was attacked when […]

  • Shashe Declaration: 1st Encounter of Agroecology Trainers in Africa Region 1

      We are 47 people from 22 organizations in 18 countries (Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda, Angola, Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya, Zambia, South Africa, Central African Republic, Brazil, Mexico, Indonesia, Portugal, USA, France, and Germany).  We are farmers and staff representing member organizations of La Via Campesina, along with allies from other farmer […]

  • Public Spending on Education in India

    The failure of the Indian state more than six decades after Independence to provide universal access to quality schooling and to ensure equal access to higher education among all socio-economic groups and across gender and region must surely rank among the more dismal and significant failures of the development project in the country.  It is […]

  • Capitalism: An Obsolete System

      Listen to the interview with Samir Amin: Can you tell me very briefly what your book Ending the Crisis of Capitalism or Ending Capitalism? is about? The title of my book is indicative of the intention.  The title, in a provocative way, is Ending the Crisis of Capitalism or Ending Capitalism in Crisis?  As […]

  • Currency War and US Imperialism: Interview with Samir Amin

    There has been much publicity about the so-called “currency war” arising from the discussions at the recent G20 meeting.  Can you explain what is meant by currency war? The discourse, the rhetoric, on the currency war is very superficial and even misleading.  As everybody knows, what is being said is that the Chinese yuan is […]

  • Loyalism and Mau Mau

      Daniel Branch.  Defeating Mau Mau, Creating Kenya: Counterinsurgency, Civil War, and Decolonization.  Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009.  xx + 250 pp.  $80.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-521-11382-3; $24.99 (paper), ISBN 978-0-521-13090-5. The two related themes in Kenya’s history that have drawn the most debate and interpretations are land and the Mau Mau war.  Daniel Branch’s study […]

  • Excerpt from “The Prophet and the Proletariat”

      What the group around Khomeini succeeded in doing was to unite behind it a wide section of the middle class — both the traditional petty bourgeoisie based in the bazaar and many of the first generation of the new middle class — in a struggle to control the hierarchies of power.  The secret of […]

  • South Africa: An Unfinished Revolution?

      The Fourth Strini Moodley Annual Memorial Lecture, University of KwaZulu-Natal, 13 May 2010 I In her historical novel, A Place of Greater Safety, which is played out against the backdrop of the Great French Revolution through an illuminating character analysis and synthesis of three of that revolution’s most prominent personalities, viz., Maximilien Robespierre, Georges […]

  • The Erupting Insurrection

      By one swift, decisive act, it has paralyzed Europe’s airline industries for almost a week, delayed 64 thousand flights (and counting), affecting millions of travellers, reminding a whole continent that geography and distance still exist, while lessening the airlines’ carbon footprint by an amount equal to the annual output of several smaller states combined, […]

  • The Politics of the Soundtrack

    Was there a golden age of the film soundtrack?  One might reach for Ennio Morricone (at least until the late 1980s) or the ’70s and ’80s records Popul Vuh made for Werner Herzog’s most memorable films, Aguirre, Nosferatu and Cobra Verde.  Even if much of the concept has gone out of ‘conceptual’ film-making and the […]

  • Mau Mau, Marx, & Coca Cola: 18th Annual Pan African Film & Arts Festival

    The 18th annual Pan African Film and Arts Festival, which takes place yearly during Black History Month, is one of Los Angeles’ cultural jewels.  Arguably America’s top Black movie venue, PAFF is a leading U.S. showcase for independent, studio, student, foreign (especially African) political and progressive pictures.  Many movies have their U.S. debuts at this […]