A regular blog from RAS Director, Nicholas Westcott.
Nicholas Westcott
Monday, 16 April 2018
Commonwealth Heads of State and Government meet in London this week. Of the 53 members of the Commonwealth, 19 are African, the largest single group. There are of course historical reasons for this. But it is striking that the two newest members of the organisation (leaving aside welcome re-joiners like The Gambia) are both from Africa: Mozambique, which joined in 1995, and Rwanda in 2009. More are waiting.
So the Commonwealth is beginning to spread beyond the strict Anglosphere, as the... more
Tuesday, 3 April 2018
The news that leaders of the African Union, under the Chairmanship of Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame, had signed up to the next phase of a Continental Free Trade Area (CFTA) in Africa at their meeting in Kigali on 21 March was greeted with a certain degree of cynicism by many commentators. The cynics have a point; but they miss a wider one.
It is true that only 44 of the 55 countries in the AU had signed the agreement, and the non-signers included Nigeria, one of the largest economies on... more
Tuesday, 30 January 2018
So, where is Africa going in 2018?
The Royal African Society began its year, as always, with a look at the Prospects and Forecasts for the year ahead. The panel (hosted by the University of London's Centre for African Studies at SOAS) brought together voices from London and the continent - Nanjala Nyabola, a political analyst from Kenya, Sethembile Msezane, an artist from South Africa, Natznet Tesfay, an Eritrean economist based here in London, and the peripatetic... more
Monday, 27 November 2017
I arrived at the Royal African Society on 1 November from seven years working on Africa and the Middle East in Brussels. It is invigorating to make a fresh start working with the continent I know better than any except my own, and the RAS is the place to do it.
My first few weeks in the job have already illustrated the strength and breadth of the RAS’s work. Film Africa was in full swing during my first week, with some remarkable productions from the continent that really deserve... more
Thursday, 21 September 2017
Kgalema Motlanthe should be basking in the glow of a well-lived life. Born in 1949 his youth was dominated by the steady advance of apartheid in South Africa. He talks slowly, describing the 1950s carefully without exaggeration or anger. His father was a social activist in Alexandra Township, the small black slum in the rich white northern suburbs of Johannesburg. In his youth, he says the African National Congress (ANC) was a talking shop, an aspiration, but as the apartheid barriers... more