Ahead of a gathering of (grey) heads of state later this month at the first African Union Summit for 2017, Levi Kabwato remembers Mohamed Bouazizi, reflects on the impact of the Arab Spring and considers the shortcomings of the AU and its supposedly youth-focused theme for 2017.

The ANC has clocked more than a 100 years and is showing assorted signs of advanced age: arthritic joints, a bent back, a withered visage… Writer Levi Kabwato traces the contours of the ANC’s decline.

After every seismic shift in the global world order, the eternal question of  what does this mean for Africa is always asked.  Levi Kabwato thinks that a Donald Trump presidency is a golden moment for Africa to chart its own development path, unmolested by the Americans.

When President Obama exits the White House, any sentimental bond felt by the African continent with the American presidency will cease. African leaders should take the opportunity to re-shape relations, strengthen their positions and make more effective demands in trade and bilateral negotiations, argues Levi Kabwato.

In the wake of the 27th Summit of the African Union Heads of State, held in Kigali, Rwanda, Levi Kabwato visits the Genocide Memorial. Juxtaposing the trauma of the past with events unfolding in the present, he wonders what the future holds for the African Union.

EU policies towards Africa and the rest of the Global South are unhelpful to the ordinary African. It is against this backdrop that we must see Britain’s EU referendum and use what we have already seen the EU do to its poorer member countries to craft more critical and useful thoughts on how Africa can respond to developments such as Brexit.

Is the AU a talk shop for tyrants and bureaucrats who have failed adequately to represent the needs of this continent’s 1.11 billion citizens? Is Agenda2063 a political programme that stands to only benefit and reward those who currently constitute the driving force behind it? Levi Kabwato from Malawi weighs in.

The recent release of veteran journalist and editor Bheki Makhubu from a Swaziland jail should have been a momentous occasion for media freedom and freedom of expression activists in southern Africa. Instead, it has turned out to be a missed opportunity to inspire confidence, re-energise practitioners and consumers alike, and call the bluff on repressive regimes.

This question came to me against the backdrop of news that French soldiers in the Central African Republic (CAR) had raped and sodomised young boys they were meant to protect.

Closed borders, increasing acts of xenophobia and the absence of popular participation mirror the failures of SADC to live up to its aspirations. Yet it re-introduced a weakened Tribunal, with serious implications for the citizens of the 15 member states