Category: Africa

Why democracies are better at managing crises

     

Among the countries whose performance during the Covid-19 crisis has been rated most highly, the overwhelming majority are democracies. What these top-ranked democracies have in common is that their leaders… Read more »

Pondering pandemic’s political potency

     

The world’s leading democracies will not be judged by how they initially responded to Covid-19, but by their success in post-crisis reconstruction, according to a leading analyst. We always knew… Read more »

Challenging the squeeze on media freedom

     

  Advocates for independent news media used Sunday’s World Press Freedom Day to call attention to what’s been dubbed the “coronavirus crackdown,” CNN reports. Journalists in numerous countries have been harassed, threatened… Read more »

Democracies vulnerable to crisis: Covid exacerbates weaknesses, says BTI

     

The COVID-19 pandemic will exacerbate the very weaknesses that have marked the democratic erosion of the last decade in most of the 137 developing and transformation countries examined in the… Read more »

Quality of democracy reaches new low – but ‘glimmers of hope’

     

The quality of democracy, market economy and governance reached its lowest level since 2004 when the Bertelsmann Stiftung’s Transformation Index (BTI) was first published, it reported today. Limits on freedom… Read more »

Is partisanship driving pandemic polarization?

     

Reuters Institute analyst J. Scott Brennen draws on sample of 225 pieces of misinformation rated false or misleading by fact-checkers, drawn from a collection maintained by First Draft, to explain… Read more »

‘Dynamism Despite Disruption’: Will pandemic undercut or rejuvenate civil society

     

In many countries, restrictive laws already had been squeezing civil society before the Covid-19 crisis hit. The pandemic provides a convenient cover for governments to further tilt the balance of power… Read more »

Ethiopia’s template for monitoring rights in Covid-19 crisis

     

The Ethiopian Human Rights Commission has announced that it will conduct a “rapid assessment” of the details of the state of emergency measures to stop the spread of the coronavirus…. Read more »

You don’t defeat the virus by bleeding democracy

     

The Covid-19 pandemic is unlikely to alleviate demands for more democratic governance, respect for human rights, equality, an end to austerity, and meaningful steps to combat climate change and corruption,… Read more »