South Africa’s Industrial Strategy Seeks Export Diversification and Investment Scale-Up Amid Trade Disruption South Africa’s Department of Trade, Industry and Competition is repositioning the country’s industrial policy architecture around export diversification, green economy transition, and large-scale investment mobilisation, as Minister…
Afrophobia and Institutional Erosion Threaten Pan-African Integration, Thabo Mbeki Lecture Warns The 16th Thabo Mbeki Africa Day Lecture, held on 24 May 2025 at the Century City Conference Centre in Cape Town, placed two converging governance failures at the centre…
Chilalo Graphite Dispute Exposes Jurisdictional Fault Lines in African Cross-Border Mining Investment A US$195 million dispute over a Tanzanian graphite project is forcing South African and Tanzanian courts to answer a question with direct consequences for foreign investment across the…
De-Dollarisation and West Africa: How the Russia-China Currency Pivot Is Reshaping Regional Trade Architecture The accelerating shift away from the US dollar in Russia-China bilateral trade — now conducted in yuan and rubles for nearly 90% of transactions — is…
Sierra Leone’s Third-Country Deportation Deal Exposes Governance Gaps in West Africa’s Migration Architecture Nine West African nationals deported from the United States landed at Lungi International Airport outside Freetown on Wednesday, marking Sierra Leone’s formal entry into a growing network…
South Africa’s Nairobi Snub Exposes France’s Eroding Institutional Leverage in Africa When President Cyril Ramaphosa declined to attend the Africa Forward Summit in Nairobi on 23 April 2025, the absence was not a scheduling inconvenience. It was a calculated diplomatic…
South Africa’s Constitutional Court Restores Parliament’s Impeachment Mandate Over Phala Phala Scandal A unanimous ruling by South Africa’s Constitutional Court on 8 May 2026 has invalidated a 2022 parliamentary vote that buried impeachment proceedings against President Cyril Ramaphosa, forcing the…
When the Regulator Becomes the Case Study South Africa’s first binding artificial intelligence policy framework was withdrawn just 16 days after its official gazetting on 10 April 2025, after journalists discovered that its reference list contained fabricated academic sources —…
Sovereign Ceilings and Short-Term Loans Are Costing African Energy Projects Billions A structurally flawed global financing architecture is systematically denying West African renewable energy projects access to capital, even as international pledges for clean energy investment multiply. The core problem…
When Persistence Becomes a Governance Failure Across West Africa’s private sector and public institutions, a persistent cultural bias toward continuation over correction is costing firms, development agencies, and state-owned enterprises measurable capital. The question is not whether organisations should persevere…
