SPECIAL FEATURES: ANALYSIS - The African Mirror

Nov

15

2025

Tutankhamun was decapitated 100 years ago – why the excavation is a great shame instead of a triumph

SPECIAL FEATURES: ANALYSIS

NOVEMBER 2025 marks 100 years since archaeologists first examined Tutankhamun’s mummified remains. What followed wasn’t a scientific triumph – it was destruction. Using hot knives and brute force, Howard Carter’s team decapitated the pharaoh, severed his limbs and dismembered his torso. Then they covered it up. Tutankhamun’s tomb was first discovered in the Valley of the Kings by a team of mostly Egyptian excavators led by Howard Carter in November 1922. However, it took several years for the excavators to clear and catalogue the tomb’s antechamber – the first part of what would become a decade-long excavation. This meticulous work,…

Nov

10

2025

By SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT

Africa’s pharmaceutical awakening: how Mombasa conference aims to end a century of dependency

SPECIAL FEATURES: ANALYSIS

FOR more than a century, Africa has been a pharmaceutical colony - dependent on distant manufacturers for the medicines that determine whether its children survive malaria, whether its mothers live through childbirth, and whether its populations can withstand the next pandemic. This week in Mombasa, that colonial relationship faces its most significant challenge yet. The Seventh Scientific Conference on Medical Products Regulation in Africa (SCoMRA VII), convening November 11-13 at the PrideInn Paradise Beach Resort & Spa, represents far more than another gathering of health officials and regulators. It is the crystallisation of sixteen years of painstaking institution-building, the unveiling…

Nov

08

2025

By KRISTIN BRIG

Access to water has a long racial history in Durban: I followed the story in the city’s archives

SPECIAL FEATURES: ANALYSIS

THE water infrastructure politics of eThekwini, the municipality that includes the city of Durban, have been splashed across the digital pages of South Africa’s news outlets in recent years. They’ve covered the 2022 floods that damaged kilometres of pipes, water tanker purchases as a response to increasing water scarcity, and the disconnection of residential water storage tanks from municipal pipes to cope with leaky infrastructure. Like other South African municipalities, eThekwini has fallen behind on maintaining its piped water infrastructure and has looked to stopgap solutions. The city’s water politics has a long history. Some of the infrastructure issues can…

Nov

07

2025

By OLAYINKA AJALA

Is there a Christian genocide in Nigeria? Evidence shows all faiths are under attack by terrorists

SPECIAL FEATURES: ANALYSIS

TERRORISM and insurgency have ravaged parts of Nigeria since 2009, especially in the northern regions. Tens of thousands of Nigerians have been killed, and millions have been displaced by the violence. Nigeria was ranked sixth in the 2025 Global Terrorism Index, with a score of 7.658, moving up from eighth place in 2023 and 2024. U.S. President Donald Trump declared Nigeria a “country of particular concern” in November 2025. This was the result of a campaign by US Congressman Riley Moore, who alleged that there was an “alarming and ongoing persecution of Christians” in the West African country. The congressman…

Nov

05

2025

By SAMIR RAMZY

Peace in Sudan? 3 reasons why mediation hasn’t worked so far

SPECIAL FEATURES: ANALYSIS

SUDAN has been embroiled in a civil war between the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces since April 2023, sparked by a power struggle between the two parties. The war has displaced more than 14 million people. Over half the population of about 50 million is facing acute levels of hunger. Several mediation initiatives have been launched since the start of the war, with limited success. The African Union has also been unable to get the main warring parties to agree to a permanent ceasefire. The four countries leading the main peace mediation effort (known as the Quad) are…

Nov

04

2025

By AHMED GOUJA

An atrocity foretold: How the RSF siege of El Fasher turned into genocidal slaughter

SPECIAL FEATURES: ANALYSIS

IN one video, dozens of bodies lie strewn on the floor of a building as militiamen move through, checking that no one is still alive. A man in a white jalabiya – seemingly the only survivor – is shot dead. “Finished,” a fighter says in Arabic as they walk out. In another video, fighters stand in a trench, guns raised, shouting cries of victory. All around them lie corpses in the sand, as vehicles burn in the distance – presumably vehicles that those people had tried to use to escape. In a third video, a different group of fighters force…

Nov

01

2025

By ALAN WHITFIELD; CHARLES HELM; FRANCIS THACKERAY; RENEE RUST, and WILLO STEAR

Where did the first people come from? The case for a coastal migration from southern Africa

SPECIAL FEATURES: ANALYSIS

THE origins and migrations of modern humans around the world are a hot topic of debate. Genetic analyses have pointed to Africa as the continent from which our ancestors dispersed in the Late Pleistocene epoch, which began about 126,000 years ago. Various dispersal routes have been suggested. As a group of scientists who have been studying human evolution, we propose in a recently published review paper that the coast of southern Africa was likely where Homo sapiens began this worldwide journey. We suggest that some people started leaving this area about 70,000 years ago, took a route along the east…

Oct

31

2025

By ARBIE BAGUIOS

What black markets in asylum seeker hotels tell us about refugee realities

SPECIAL FEATURES: ANALYSIS

A BBC investigation into hotels housing asylum seekers in the UK revealed “evidence of black market work.” This might evoke imagery of illicit dealings that will only fuel right-wingers’ racist and xenophobic demonstrations. But in reality, this shows people simply eking out a living – often as low-paid labourers such as food delivery drivers, whose work we considered essential, and even clapped for, during the COVID-19 pandemic. If anything, it is evidence of a deeply broken system where asylum seekers are compelled to work in secret just to get by – but also of people’s desire to make themselves useful…

Oct

24

2025

By SIMON HOWELL and CLEMENCE RUSENGA

Cannabis boom in South Africa and Zimbabwe is good for wealthy investors, bad for small farmers

SPECIAL FEATURES: ANALYSIS

CANNABIS is booming as an ingredient in everything from supplementary oils, inflammation-reducing skin creams, lip balms, to health drinks and gummy sweets that promise to reduce anxiety and pain and promote relaxation. The global legal cannabis market is today worth about US$69.78 billion, and this will skyrocket to US$216.76 billion by 2033. But is this boom benefiting indigenous cannabis farmers in southern Africa? They’d been growing the plant for hundreds of years before colonial authorities criminalised it in the early 1900s. Rural people continued to grow it illicitly after that, relying on its medicinal properties. For many rural households in…

Oct

23

2025

By PAPA SOW

Turkey’s charm offensive in Senegal: migration scholar unpacks the relationship

SPECIAL FEATURES: ANALYSIS

TURKEY has been trying to establish a stronghold in Africa, using the “Opening up to Africa” policy it adopted in 1998. Its Africa Action Plan, based on humanitarian aid, politics and economic cooperation, has turned toward West Africa. As a scholar of migration studies, I’ve analysed the forms of agencies, social networks and transnational e-commerce between Dakar and Istanbul. I also look at the people involved, including migrants, networks of traders and “gratis passengers” – people who use their baggage allowance to transport small packages between Istanbul and Dakar. My study highlights active transnational trade and a circular, yet strategic,…