The G20 met in Asheville on 1 September and offered a non-binding template. Africa needs a binding UN treaty on sovereign debt, and the next twelve months are where that fight sits.
A phone call from a stranger, a board that took a risk on a 33 year old, and five filled notebooks. What twenty years in the civic space taught me, and the three lessons I am carrying to AFRODAD.
African governments are restricting mineral exports, and the measures are being read as a continental assertion of resource sovereignty. The design of those measures tells a more modest story about who they were built to protect.
Two negotiations now under way will shape African public finance for a generation. The UN tax convention is in line-by-line drafting and the Borrowers’ Platform is building a debtor caucus that has never existed. Both will be won or lost in clauses that read like housekeeping.
Domestic resource mobilisation captures a larger share of value that already exists. Resource creation builds what an economy cannot yet make. Africa’s minerals are the test case, and the jobs are the measure.
Social spending floors sit in IMF programmes as indicative targets, so they carry no consequence when they break. Across Africa the adjustment lands on unpaid care work.
Last week in Bulawayo, alongside Mine Entra 2026, we sat down with communities living on top of Zimbabwe’s critical minerals. The sessions were coordinated by the Zimbabwe Environmental Law Association with support from the Southern Africa Trust. The purpose was to ask the people closest
Last week I wrote about the nurse in Manchester who wires her sister’s school fees to Harare every month. Look closer at what her money buys. School fees. A grandmother’s blood pressure tablets. Crèche fees so a cousin can keep her market stall. The wire
Every month, a nurse in Manchester wires her sister’s school fees to Harare. A driver in Houston sends rent money to his mother in Lagos. A teacher in Johannesburg pays a cousin’s hospital bill in Bulawayo. None of them call this development finance. They call
It has been some months since I last wrote here. One question pulled me back: as the world scrambles for Africa’s critical minerals, who carries the cost, and who captures the value? Africa is setting new terms Something is shifting across the continent. In February