23/3/2020
Dear members and friends, Like everyone, the Royal African Society has been impacted by the coronavirus Covid-19. I thought it sensible to let you know how we will be operating and what we will be doing as long as the emergency lasts. Fortunately, none of our staff or Council have yet caught the virus, …
The coronavirus Covid-19 has delivered a massive shock to the world. We will all be adjusting to it not just for months but for years. It has major implications for Britain, for Africa and for the whole world, and it is not too soon to start thinking about the...
17/3/2020
2019 was a pretty mixed year both in Africa and the UK. In Africa, there were bright spots like Senegal and Ghana; some dark spots, like Cameroon and Zimbabwe where problems are festering; and a lot of dappled spots in between from Sudan and Ethiopia, w...
09/1/2020
This blog was co-authored by Dr Julian Eaton (Co-Director of the Centre for Global Mental Health at LSHTM and Mental Health Director at CBM International), Dr Nicholas Westcott (Director of the Royal African Society) and Prof Stanley Okolo (Director-General of...
10/10/2019
When a prominent Liberian women’s rights activist, let us call her Mary, was personally invited to Britain by DfID to speak at the 2017 Family Planning Summit, she leapt at the opportunity to give direct testimony to a key meeting. But first she had to tra...
16/7/2019
When a prominent Liberian women’s rights activist, let us call her Mary, was personally invited to Britain by DfID to speak at the 2017 Family Planning Summit, she leapt at the opportunity to give direct testimony to a key meeting. But first she had to tra...
16/7/2019
On 23 May, the Royal African Society, with the SOAS Centre for African Studies and London Business School’s Africa Club, held an open workshop on ‘The African Middle Class Re-examined’. The discussion explored who exactly the ‘African middle class’ a...
31/5/2019
Last month, in mid-April, I visited Addis Ababa with a group from SOAS’s Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy to talk to people about multilateral diplomacy in Africa and the respective roles of the African Union, United Nations and individual nati...
07/5/2019
Last week, the International Criminal Court (ICC) acquitted Laurent Gbagbo and his former youth minister. The court in The Hague ruled that Cote d’Ivoire’s former president had no case to answer and dropped charges of crimes against humanity, which related...
22/1/2019