COMMENT | ANDREW PI BESI | In western Uganda lies Kasese — home to the country’s highest peak, Margherita Peak, the crowning summit of Mount Stanley within the majestic Rwenzori Mountains. That our highest point bears the name of an Italian queen is perhaps history’s subtle reminder that even geography …
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Examining the disparate evolution of human history across the world COMMENT | NNANDA KIZITO SSERUWAGI | I am a citizen of a Third World country. I live in the Global South. I hope that explains all about my interest in the subject of development, or, to be more exact, the …
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“Wrong must not win by technicalities” — Aeschylus COMMENT | ANDREW PI BESI | I am often asked why I return, almost instinctively, to history when reflecting on the failures and possibilities of Africa’s contemporary political order. Why, some wonder, do I insist on excavating the past when addressing the present? …
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In the spirit of 1964, Africa must turn indignation into agency and sovereignty into strategy COMMENT | ANDREW PI BESI | I returned from my annual pilgrimage to Rujumbura, undertaken in observance of Christmas, only to be confronted by reports that the United States had, under cover of night, undertaken military …
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COMMENT | ALEX ATWEMEREIREHO | Africa is not a sleeping giant; it is a suffocated one. Its lungs have long been pressed by the weight of imperial duplicity, its arteries drained by extractive economies masquerading as partnerships, and its political spine bent by postcolonial elites conditioned to administer decline on …
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How Old Empires Rebranded Themselves and Learned to Rule Through Chaos COMMENT | ANDREW PI BESI | On Christmas Day in 1497, Vasco da Gama rounded the southern tip of Africa. He named the land he encountered Natalis—Portuguese for Christmas. Today, it is known as KwaZulu-Natal. Da Gama’s voyage opened …
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COMMENT | Gertrude Kamya Othieno | Names are more than identifiers; they are carriers of history, culture, and identity. In Europe, names like Mount Olympus, St. Peter’s Basilica, and the River Thames are preserved as markers of cultural heritage and continuity. In stark contrast, Africa’s names, personal and geographical, were systematically stripped …
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COMMENT | Gertrude Kamya Othieno | Following my article “How Europe Launched a World Rampage from 1492”, I today explore the hidden agendas behind colonialism and imperialism, and the symbolism that supported their expansion. For too long, the British Empire’s “civilising missions” have been glorified, masking the subjugation and control driving …
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Where colonialism of old was about seizing territory, techno-colonialism controls our daily lives COMMENT | HERMANN HAUSER & HAZEM DANNY NAKIB | In 1853, under orders from President Millard Fillmore, U.S. Navy Commodore Matthew Perry led four warships on a mission to persuade Japan to end its 200-year-old isolationist policy. When …
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Author Guillaume Blanc debunks a colonial myth According to Guillaume Blanc, author of The Invention of Green Colonialism, one of these pitfalls is the idea of an “African Eden” that casts an entire continent as the site of pristine wilderness instead of a region populated and shaped by humans for …
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The Independent Uganda: You get the Truth we Pay the Price
