Sa'eed Husaini is research fellow at the Center for Democracy and Development in Abuja, Nigeria, and a contributing editor for Africa Is a Country.
An outsider candidate, Peter Obi, is the surprise favorite in this week’s Nigerian presidential election. Obi has attracted support from labor and youth activists, but his neoliberal economic agenda won’t address the dire social conditions afflicting Nigeria.
The #EndSARS movement has convulsed Nigeria for weeks, demanding an end to police brutality. But the protesters have something else in their crosshairs: the unequal, austerity-ridden status quo and the political class that defends it.
African countries have shown impressive ingenuity in dealing with the coronavirus. But the legacies of colonialism and Western-imposed austerity have left them ill-equipped to attack the deadly virus.
The anti-colonial struggle of the twentieth century wasn’t just about winning political independence — it was about shattering the global hierarchies that subjugated the Global South and winning an egalitarian world for all.
Patrice Lumumba was a radical leader of the Congolese independence movement who resisted Belgian colonialism and corporate interests. That’s why he was assassinated in a US-backed coup 59 years ago today.
Before his assassination in 1973, Amílcar Cabral was one of Africa’s leading anti-colonialists — a brilliant agronomist and socialist whose leadership of the armed struggle against Portuguese rule brought the empire to its knees.