Editorial November 2026 | Looking beyond the image
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- By Team ZAM
- Politics & Opinion
This issue’s main feature is a celebration of South African photography, and there is good reason for that. The old cliché that a picture is worth a thousand words — barring, of course, cases where a photograph is misused to serve a particular narrative — applies very much to South Africa and the African continent as a whole, so often subjected to stereotyping and an outside, frequently prejudiced gaze. In a new series called “Beyond the Image”, the first instalment of which we publish today, ZAM’s Heidi Sincuba hears from photographers, their loved ones and those working to preserve their legacies about their struggles with stereotypes — including some they, too, had absorbed and later came to confront through their camera lenses.
Editorial September 2026 | Xenophobia and truth
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- By Team ZAM
- Politics & Opinion
Facts are often missing from debates on migration. Has the deportation of undocumented people from the US resulted in more jobs and services for US citizens? Did the busing of 50,000 migrants out of South Africa deliver more medicines to the country’s dilapidated clinics? Will Europe’s documented youth have more access to housing if unsuccessful asylum seekers are safely stashed behind barbed wire in “return hub” countries?
Africa | Civil society rising
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- By Evelyn Groenink
- Politics & Opinion
The NGO world in Africa — while often performing important work in healthcare and other public services — has also been criticised for its dependence on donor agendas and the practice of tailoring grant proposals to fit donor themes and priorities. Satirists such as Elnathan John have lampooned these and other habits of many NGOs, including their, likewise donor-influenced, reluctance to challenge authority. The NGO sector’s routine of holding “endless cycles of workshops” was also featured, unflatteringly, in ZAM’s recent investigation into elections in several African countries.
Ghana | The cocoa dollar wasting game
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- By ZAM reporter
- Investigations
The world loves the chocolate made from Ghana’s cocoa beans. But those in charge of the cocoa revenues flowing into the West African country have been found to be responsible for major mismanagement and waste, defaulting on payments to the country’s nearly one million cocoa farmers and other sector workers, while saddling all Ghanaians with ballooning debt. “The lenders, like the IMF and World Bank, are complicit. They benefit from the status quo.”
Senegal | The seafood platter’s human cost
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- By Ian Urbina
- Investigations
Fishmeal helps power a global c boom while pushing pollution, depletion and unrest onto poorer coastal communities in Senegal and many other countries, a global investigation reveals.
Rwanda | War talk
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- By Samuel Baker BYANSI
- Politics & Opinion
The propaganda emanating from Kigali is a warning: Rwanda’s regime now presents a global threat. Within roughly a day of each other last August, two articles surfaced in Kigali’s media ecosystem that, read side by side, tell us that the war in eastern Congo is far from over. They also suggest that — if the Rwandan regime’s propaganda in these mouthpieces is to be taken seriously, as it should be — there is a risk that the conflict could expand.
South Africa | The xenophobia story
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- By ZAM team
- Politics & Opinion
This winter in South Africa, which was summer in the global North, the world was shaken by images of mostly poor Black South Africans marching against often even poorer Black African immigrants, many of them undocumented. At times, the marches in townships and informal settlements turned violent. Ghettos within ghettos were “cleansed”, with Zimbabwean, Malawian and other African families and workers chased from their homes.
Africa and Europe | Migration Deadlock
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- By Green European Journal
- Politics & Opinion
Migration features prominently in Europe’s demographic debates, whether as a looming threat or as a silver bullet against ageing societies. With the EU’s normalisation of border externalisation and the far right’s growing emphasis on “remigration”, progressives have tried to reframe the debate around economic benefits, class, and inequality. But flawed narratives and a crisis of trust have blocked productive conversation. Former Green member of the European Parliament Judith Sargentini explains how we got to the current impasse – and how we might overcome it.
Burkina Faso | A decolonial mirage
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- By ZAM reporter
- Politics & Opinion
“We don’t know what is true, because everyone in the country has been silenced.”
Kenya | Tech’s deadly recruiting ground
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- By Mukanzi Musanga
- Investigations
Many tech firms recruit content moderators and other personnel from across Africa to work in Nairobi, the continent’s “Silicon Valley”. But dodgy contracts and residency issues can leave migrants stranded. OpenDemocracy investigated the death of Nigerian Ladi Olubunmi and noted the comment from the Nigerian consulate on the fate of its migrant citizens: “They are not children.”
Africa | Artivists
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- By Theophilus Abbah, Josephine Chinele, Elizabeth BanyiTabi and Mukudzei Madenyika
- Investigations
Samantha Kureya was abducted and tortured, yet came back to continue her comedy show. Satirical performer Bon Kalindo was arrested fifteen times. Cartoonist Mustapha Bulama was slammed by Nigeria's First Lady, and the fun-poking newspaper Le Popoli recently emerged from a six-month publication ban. But their following on social media, especially among the youth, keeps increasing. A team of investigative journalists in Zimbabwe, Malawi, Nigeria, and Cameroon discovered how the power of laughter, especially laughter at authorities, is undermining "politicians who use big words to confuse the public" across the African continent.
Zimbabwe | The parody tsunami
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- By Mukudzei Madenyika
- Investigations
A daring contingent of young, tech-savvy content creators routinely battle censorship, arrests and worse to help increase awareness of Zimbabwe’s critical issues through humour. The wave is not confined to politics: the environment, economics and even religious beliefs are being questioned in a tsunami of YouTube, TikTok and other parody productions. But the ruling party ZANU PF, its militants and government are the butt of most jokes.
