Strategic Thinking on East Africa

From the Guardian Martin Plaut European officials under pressure to cut migration should have learned by now that ignoring human rights violations is unlikely to succeed Eritrean refugee children play at a refugee camp in the Tigrai region in Ethiopia. Photograph: Tiksa Negeri/Reuters As the European parliament hosts another Eritrean politician in the hope of […]

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  by the Strathink Editorial Team The discourse on Ethiopian politics is a bleak landscape of twisted and oblique narratives packaged in a one-size-fits-all generic model of “the African state” rather than “the state in Africa.” Current writing about recent events in Ethiopia theorizes the state as authoritarian, repressive and corrupt. The cause of the […]

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To our readers: This week we feature commentary on Rene Lefort’s recent article, “Ethiopia’s crisis,” published in openDemocracy. Today we post an article by one of our readers, Elias Dawit. We encourage more submissions for posting in the hope that we can facilitate a reasoned conversation about Ethiopian politics, devoid of the polemics and narrow […]

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Editors Note: From one of our readers. by Kassahun Alemayehu The spike of unrest in parts of the country that preceded the Ethiopian government’s declaration of a state of emergency led many observers to ask, “Is Ethiopia’s success story of economic growth and political stability at last fizzling out?” For fourteen years, Ethiopia has registered […]

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From al Jazeera The decision comes after months of hesitation by South Sudan after soaring violence erupted in Juba in July. South Sudan agreed to accept the deployment of a UN-mandated force in Juba [Thomas Mukoya/Reuters] The South Sudan government has agreed to accept the deployment of a UN-mandated regional force in Juba, a spokesman […]

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by the Strathink Editorial Team Feyisa Lilesa, Berhanu Nega, Merera Gudina, and Ana Gomes are a mixed bag of political and ethical hypocrisy. Each occupies a uniquely singular place in contemporary Ethiopian politics. Separately they are short bursts of noise on the internet. Together they are a headline that outlives its usefulness in a few […]

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From https://eldahshan.com/2016/11/13/the-us-elections-and-their-aftermath-covered-as-we-do-african-elections/ Had to be done (actually surprised it hasn’t already): Writing about the latest US elections like US media writes about African countries. **COUNTRY CRISIS WATCH** [insert CNN “breaking news” type of jingle] The US of A, a nation located in the center of the North American continent, is shaken by its latest electoral results, […]

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From the Brookings Institution Witney Schneidman For Africa, at stake in this election of Donald Trump is the strong bipartisan consensus in Congress that has been the cornerstone of U.S. policy toward the continent for the last three administrations. This consensus, supported by Presidents Clinton, Bush, and Obama, was predicated on the notion that Africa […]

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Some good news for our readers. The United States has its first Somali-American legislator. Ilhan Omar made history on Tuesday night after winning in a state House race. Ilhan, who stood on the ticket of the Democratic Farmer Labour (DFL) – affiliated to the Democratic Party, in Minneapolis District, defeated the nominal Republican opposition. She […]

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This came in from one of our readers. by Abebaye Tegen The Ethiopian ruling party, for the first time in its quarter of a century in power, declared a state of Emergency following over a year of protest that claimed thousands of lives and a huge damage of property. Every day people are dying or jailed in […]

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