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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?
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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.
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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.
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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.
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- By ZAM reporter
- Politics & Opinion
“We don’t know what is true, because everyone in the country has been silenced.”
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- By ZAM Reporter
- Politics & Opinion
Africa’s wealth enriches many, but rarely its own citizens. In Big Brother Wildlife, a transnational team of journalists exposes how Africa’s rich natural heritage and wildlife are increasingly being fenced off — using even military-grade surveillance technology — to benefit foreign visitors, while local communities face ever-growing restrictions on the use of their own land.
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- By ZAM Reporter
- Politics & Opinion
ZAM is thrilled to welcome two highly skilled professionals to our board. Oyunga Pala is a writer, executive coach, and curator-in-chief of “The Elephant” media platform in Nairobi. Dr Marcus Desando is a Cultural Leader, Arts Executive, Opera Director, and former Director of the Prins Claus Fonds. He will take up the position of Chair of our board. They join Dineo Nhlapo and Milton van Wyk, our much-valued Treasurer and Secretary. Together, they form an inspiring and driven team of governors, ready to guide our organisation forward.
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- By ZAM Reporter
- Politics & Opinion
African audiences’ responses to our “Elections Circus” publication — which detailed how more than €100 million of EU taxpayers’ money, earmarked for free and fair elections, has largely benefited ruling elites rather than supporting meaningful democratic change — have been overwhelming. Hundreds of readers accessed the online link as soon as it went live, and print copies sold in significantly higher numbers than usual.
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- By Heidi Thembeka Sincuba
- Politics & Opinion
South Africa’s post-apartheid Constitution, which unapologetically centres human equality and rights for all, is now paving the way for the decriminalisation of sex work in the country.
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- By Molly Fitzpatrick
- Politics & Opinion
Why was a study funded by the U.S. Department of Health and conducted by Danish researchers set to be carried out on infants in Guinea-Bissau, one of Africa’s poorest countries? Anthropologist and reproductive health researcher Molly Fitzpatrick examines the reproductive politics underlying the cancelled vaccine trial, which was investigated for ZAM by Samba Baldé.
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- By Bart Luirink
- Politics & Opinion
Read the English version below.
“Alle geesten van onze koloniale en postkoloniale geschiedenis werden toen opgegraven, waarna ze bleven rondspoken. De stemfraude was de vonk die in het kruitvat sloeg.” Het is een citaat uit de mond van de Keniaanse schrijver en journalist Parselelo Kantai, opgetekend door Marnix de Bruyne in zijn onlangs verschenen boek Als een slang je bijt, blijf je altijd bang.
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- By ZAM Reporter
- Politics & Opinion
As often highlighted by ZAM, there is no shortage of troubling dynamics shaping relations between Africa and Europe. As Fortress Capitalism gains ground across the continent, wealth and resources open borders and airports, while those most exploited are left vulnerable to traffickers, often ending up behind barbed wire or in trenches. At the same time, autocracy and oppression are on the rise, increasingly sustained by a rapidly expanding security industry.
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- By Marnix de Bruyne
- Politics & Opinion
During the ethnic violence in Kenya in 2008, the church in Kiambaa became a symbol of the horror that shook the country. Kikuyu who had sought refuge there were killed on New Year’s Day when Kalenjin youths set the building alight.
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- By ZAM Reporter
- Politics & Opinion
The word ‘equal’, often followed by ‘partner’ or ‘relationship’, or simply used as ‘equality’, appears 68 times in the Netherlands’ Africa Strategy document. This paper, in which “shared challenges, such as security and migration, while promoting investment” are the most prominent points, was launched in 2023 and is intended to guide Dutch dealings with the African continent over the next decade...
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- By ZAM Reporter
- Politics & Opinion
2025 was the year in which Gabon’s President Nguema returned from a visit to the White House wearing a MAGA cap; the Rwandan government struck a US$200 million deal with Donald Trump in exchange for American control over Congolese mineral resources; Sudanese warlords...
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- By ZAM Reporter
- Politics & Opinion
Whenever we think we have seen it all, something like Nicki Minaj addressing the United Nations about “genocide” of Christians in Nigeria happens.
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- By Oyunga Pala
- Politics & Opinion
During the recent Dutch election debate in October, populist politician Geert Wilders, leader of the extreme right-wing PVV party, made a controversial remark.
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- By Beloved John
- Politics & Opinion
Two weeks ago, Trump threatened to send troops to stop “the genocide” of Christians in Nigeria. His message, shared on social media — as he does with any foreign policy announcement — terrified Nigerians.
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- By Evelyn Groenink
- Politics & Opinion
On a TikTok video she made, Pontsho Pilane holds a South African Christian magazine called Joy! The cover shows the face of Erica Kirk, the widow of extreme right-wing evangelical influencer Charlie Kirk, who was recently killed in the US.
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- By ZAM Reporter
- Politics & Opinion
ZAM’s office in the Netherlands may have been surrounded by the noise and clamour of election campaigns in recent days, but that commotion pales in comparison to the protests — and, sadly, the violent responses by authorities — that have accompanied elections in Cameroon, Ivory Coast, and Tanzania during the same period.
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- By ZAM Reporter
- Politics & Opinion
In 1955, now seventy years ago, the Bandung Conference took place in Indonesia. Initiated by Indian Prime Minister Nehru and Indonesian President Sukarno, twenty-nine newly independent African and Asian countries committed themselves to a charter emphasising ‘respect for fundamental human rights’.
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- By ZAM Reporter
- Politics & Opinion
The LGBTQIA+ community in Burkina Faso responds with shock to lawmakers’ decision to recriminalise consensual same-sex sexual relationships.
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- By ZAM Reporter
- Politics & Opinion
Produced over eleven years in Mali and Mauritania, the film offers a unique first-person account of Tuareg history and culture against a backdrop of conflict and exile. It is a story of transmission and memory, where the intimate meets the political,
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- By ZAM Reporter
- Politics & Opinion
Draagt een culturele boycot van officiële Israelische instituties bij aan het Palestijnse streven naar zelfbeschikking? In Nieuwsuur reflecteerde ZAM redacteur Bart Luirink op de ervaringen van zo’n boycot in de strijd tegen apartheid.
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- By By Charles Mafa, Samuel Baker Byansi, Elizabeth BanyiTabi, Eric Mugendi, William Moige, Josephine Chinele, Emmanuel Mutaizibwa, Beloved John and Evelyn Groenink
- Politics & Opinion
Instead of young Africans trading their dreams for a place in someone else’s war, the international community should embrace them.
