Column

COMMENT | JAPHET ARITHO | As we step into the new year, it’s imperative to reflect on the lessons learned from the past month, a period marked by joyous celebrations but also overshadowed by the grim reality of road accidents in Uganda. The festive season of December 2023, much like …

  COMMENT | IAN BURUMA |  Claudine Gay, Harvard University’s first Black female president, was forced to resign after weeks of pressure to step down. But everyone involved in the controversy that pushed her out looks bad. The ostensible reason for her ouster was sloppy academic writing – mostly the …

COMMENT | JEREMY ADELMAN | Following Donald Trump’s victory in the US presidential election in 2016, many pundits predicted a worldwide breakdown of democracy, and some warned of civil war. But, aside from Africa’s Sahel region, military coups remain rare, and civil wars rarer still. Instead, democracies have tended to break …

COMMENT | SARAH NEWMAN | When the world leaders gathered in Dubai for the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP28), the United Arab Emirates unveiled the world’s highest-capacity waste-to-energy (WTE) facility. The plant is designed to process two million metric tons of municipal waste annually, producing enough electricity to power 120,000 …

COMMENT | Jan-Werner Mueller |  More than two months after the decisive victory of pro-democracy parties in Poland’s general election, opposition leader Donald Tusk has finally been sworn in as prime minister. Initially, Mateusz Morawiecki, his predecessor from the right-wing populist Law and Justice (PiS) party, had been reappointed by President Andrzej Duda, beholden to PiS, under the …

COMMENT | PEPE JULIAN ONZIEMA | In the 1990s, as a 15-year-old high-school student in Uganda, I was a member of a “writers’ club” that would summarize for our fellow students key articles from the lone copy of the local newspaper our school received each day. One day, I was …

  COMMENT | ANA PALACIO |  It has been an eventful year, to put it mildly. In fact, the world has endured so much war, disruption, tension, and uncertainty that we are left to wonder whether the rules-based global order, which has guided international relations since World War II, will survive …

COMMENT | KAUSHIK BASU | The International Economic Association (IEA) recently concluded its 20th World Congress in Medellín, Colombia. This triennial event brings together scholars from all over the world to share and discuss the latest developments in economic thinking. This year’s edition underscored the urgency of re-evaluating some of the …

COMMENT | DR MARTIN LUKINDU | The World Health Organization’s World Malaria Report 2023, released this month, paints a concerning picture of the global state of malaria in 2022. Despite continued efforts, malaria remains a significant public health challenge, with both malaria incidence and mortality higher now than they were …

COMMENT | Samson Tinka |  On 13th December, a passenger who had booked a ticked on Uganda airlines to Dubai missed a flight because he came late. This would be ok because we miss flights for one reason or another. However, he and colleagues filmed a short video and later shared …