The Government of Cameroon may hold the ignominious distinction of holding the record for the most lobbying and PR contracts terminated in recent memory. However, those inclined to prioritize profit over principle are legion in Washington, DC, and that is unlikely to end anytime soon.

The lessons of history are readily available to all of us as Zimbabweans. These acts of supposed goodwill by an incompetent, repressive and corrupt government will not change the grim reality for the majority of Zimbabweans.

Regional leaders have a key role to play in ensuring a peaceful and workable solution to the crisis in Mali. However, they must listen to and include the concerns of ordinary Malians — their voices bring credibility to the process and will help ensure a sustainable peace.

The failure of Somalia to thus far achieve a 30% quota for women’s representation in parliament has its roots in the fact that it’s been a mere political commitment, not a constitutionally binding one. It is time for democrats across Somalia and for the country’s international backers to speak up and demand necessary reform.

The mistreatment and torture of dissident Fouad Youssouf Ali and the arrest of local journalist Kassim Nouh Abar have thrust Djibouti into the spotlight for all of the wrong reasons, once again. Global media attention is one key way in which to hold the country’s long-ruling dictator accountable.

Operating since 2006, the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights is the outcome of a long-fought battle by civil society activists to create a judicial body that will protect the rights of Africa’s most vulnerable citizens. Its standing and legitimacy, however, is coming under increasing attack by the continent’s selfish leaders.

Over the past week, the assaults, torture and arrests of women activists and critics in Africa — in Zimbabwe, Uganda and Egypt — shine a spotlight on an epidemic with roots much deeper than the novel coronavirus.

In Burundi, there are many unresolved concerns a day before a major election. Nevertheless, citizens head to the polls, with hope and a sense of fear, to end the often bloody and violent regime of Pierre Nkurunziza.

What is needed in Zimbabwe today, now more than ever, is a cohesive and peaceful resistance to counter the state repression that is being forcefully implemented by President Mnangagwa with the aid of Western lobby and PR firms.

The coronavirus pandemic has provided authoritarian leaders across Africa an ironclad excuse to tighten their grips on power, all while the world’s attention in diverted.

As leaders in the rest of the world, including our immediate neighbors, were advocating social distancing, our president was encouraging mass religious congregations as an antidote to the coronavirus. This represented only the beginning of the farce now unfolding in Tanzania.

What matters is that our dignity and our rights be respected during this time, no matter what. And that our sense of solidarity and of being in this all together lives in.

After narrowly winning the now cancelled election of 2019, incumbent President Peter Mutharika – who has been routinely called out for increasing repression in the country – is preparing to rig another vote in his favor.

One year from today, on 20 March 2021, citizens in the Republic of Congo will again head to the polls. We implore world powers, and global activists and citizens alike, to help elevate critical pro-democracy voices. Do not allow another fundamentally marred election take place.

Dictatorships are bad for public health, both within their borders and globally. Effective solutions demand the free flow of information, democratic accountability and open dialogue between citizens and their rulers, as well as honesty and cooperation among global counterparts.

In Zimbabwe, human rights abuses, arrests, and disappearances of opposition members and supporters continue under President Emmerson Mnangagwa, with an uptick in state violence. This reality is at extreme odds with the “new Zimbabwe” that the president and his regime had promised after seizing power in late 2017.

A momentous court decision on the validity of the May 2019 election results is due in several days. Regardless of the verdict, Malawi will need the efforts of everyone, no matter their political affiliation, to roll up their sleeves and help to build a new and more democratic country.

Much of the news emanating from The Gambia over the past several days has been grim. However, the latest events are best viewed as the foreseeable growing pains for a nascent democracy, one that has only recently emerged from the clutches of one of the most brutal dictatorships ever known to have existed.

If anyone was skeptical about Faure Gnassingbe’s intent to leave or to stay in power in Togo, the answer came on Tuesday, January 7 when he once again “humbly accepted” the nomination of his ruling party.

The International Monetary Fund would be wise to break with past precedent and make clear whose side it truly stands on: the suffering people of Equatorial Guinea or its retrograde dictator.